Custom Critical Power Solutions
For the past 50 years, Mitsubishi Electric has been intimately involved in developing customized solutions to address specific customer needs in mission critical applications.
Custom Critical Power Solutions
For the past 50 years, Mitsubishi Electric has been intimately involved in developing customized solutions to address specific customer needs in mission critical applications.
Mitsubishi Electric Design Technique
Critical power applications require varying techniques to accommodate the upcoming changes in the design codes sites are required to follow. In order to stay ahead of this curve, engineers and customers on the forefront of technology are always looking to the future in their design requirements.
The end user of this equipment is the number one concern of these custom designs. The resultant requirements are speed of delivery, safety, and maintainability of all equipment. These resolutions elevate the overall security, protection, and/or safety to all critical power stakeholders.
The Mitsubishi team strives to build lasting relationships with its customers and remains dedicated to finding solutions to their specific needs.
MegaPod®
Colocation customers have a very hard time meeting the needs of their customers without over buying equipment or having excessive lead time imposed on their customers. The average lead time for a custom piece of switch gear can be upwards of 16 weeks.
In order to ensure the speed of delivery and install, Mitsubishi Electric has worked with several customers to develop a custom line up referred to as the MegaPod®.
The MegaPod® is a fully integrated design that minimizes installation time by providing pre-engineered connections between the UPS, batteries, and the input/output switchgear. This requires less installation time from electricians onsite, reducing costs. Also, since the gear is all pre-designed, it can be delivered to site in 6-8 weeks, greatly increasing a customers speed to market.
Containerized & Skid-Mounted Solutions
Containerized and skid mounted UPS systems are another approach to simplifying installation on site. Containerized systems are designed to house all critical load power components. This includes the UPS, batteries, switchgear, cooling, static transfer switches, automatic transfer switches, fire suppression and emergency lighting.
This provides a fully-engineered approach that can be set at site and just requires input and output cabling installation. This drastically reduces site cost by putting all power expansion in the container. Pair this with another generator, and the site can add capacity in a modular way.
Skid mounting of UPS modules provide a similar approach as the container where everything is pre-connected, but is meant to go inside the building so it does not offer its own cooling, fire suppression or lighting.
Expandability
Future expansion is a basic design element to work around when designing colocation facilities. Customers do not want to purchase more equipment than they need at the initial build.
One customer required a unique switchgear design to allow additional output distribution to be added in the future without having to take the system completely down.
They also required all output breakers to be touch-safe so that technicians would not be in harm's way while performing service measurements on live equipment. Mitsubishi Electric was able to meet these customers’ demands and remain breaker manufacturer impartial.
Preventive Maintenance
When performing preventive maintenance on a critical UPS system, it is common to transition from the UPS to the maintenance bypass source. This procedure can require the opening and closing of large breakers. One concern is the event of an arc flash during a transition caused by a breaker failure.
To safely transition the UPS system to maintenance bypass, Mitsubishi Electric integrated a PLC control system with a touch screen HMI to perform this procedure from a safe operating distance. The onsite technician can now safely perform the transition without any concern for operator error or arc flash.
Custom Imaging
Designing ease of maintenance into critical switchgear prevents downtime and ensures trouble-free operation for years to come. The most common cause of failure in switchgear is hot spots developing over time.
In order to maintain the gear, thermal imaging is required in a regular maintenance interval. This requires the IR scan ports to be installed in the gear or have a technician fully suited in PPE to perform a scan with the dead fronts off.
One customer did not have the ability to see all of the connections in their switchgear via IR scan windows, so Mitsubishi Electric proposed the idea to add IR cameras into the gear to capture all of the connections. The IR cameras could display on the front of the gear in a touch screen HMI. This greatly simplified the customer's maintenance activities.