With the instability of South Africa’s electricity supply and the uncertainty that came with load shedding, many businesses decided to invest in technology to keep them running when in the event of load shedding. Businesses turned to generators and Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPSs) as a means to mitigate the risk and loss of revenue with power outages.
The UPS is a useful technology in that it can provide power assurance when necessary, and can also assure quality of power so that crucial electronic equipment is protected from the inevitable power dips and surges that come with outages for certain periods of time. However, a UPS is much like a car as it needs to be maintained in order to extend its lifespan and prevent failure when the power goes out. It is, therefore, essential to have a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with any purchase of a UPS.
The UPS can keep the wheels of industry turning
Industries that have come to rely on UPSs include manufacturing environments, mining and food and beverage production industries, to name a few. A UPS is there to protect critical loads in environments that cannot afford downtime. For instance, in a production line where goods or components are manufactured and assembled, if production is halted due to a power outage, it impacts sales, revenue and of course, staff productivity, even in a semi-automated environment. Productivity comes to a complete halt without a UPS, and when the power comes back on the staff is under even more pressure to make up for lost time.
Yet when a UPS purchase is made, many business owners assume that a SLA is unnecessary and do not consider the need to repair or maintain a UPS. However, when one considers the cost of the SLA for a UPS versus the cost of downtime, the case for a SLA becomes undeniable. Just as important as maintaining and servicing the UPS, a SLA also guarantees the response time within which the service provider must react, should the UPS they have provided fail. Companies or operation managers often assume that maintenance or repair thereof is something they can handle in-house, or worse, it never occurred to them that maintenance or repair would be necessary.
A Service Level Agreement is not just important, it’s indispensable
The importance of maintaining a UPS system cannot be overstated. The impact of downtime, especially in a manufacturing or industrial environment is potentially devastating if production is stopped or slowed, even for a short while. When a UPS is responsible for critical loads it becomes even more important to ensure that maintenance is undertaken regularly. Having the unit serviced will avoid possible costly damage to the UPS and will prevent downtime, not to mention the fact that regular maintenance ensures that the UPS does not fail at a critical moment.
Why do UPSs fail? Generally, it’s because they’re not maintained properly, or at all. Often an organisation will only discover that their UPS needs attention once a power failure has occurred and this inevitably leads to downtime. The cause of failure is usually battery failure. Batteries fail, it’s a fact of life. Whether due to a completed life cycle, manufacturer’s defect, or some other cause, there’s no guarantee a battery will operate as intended but fortunately, UPS batteries typically provide warning signs that something is wrong. Regularly cleaning, testing (and maintaining) a battery helps ensure that it has sufficient capacity to power a system should the principal electricity source fail. Additional causes for failure could be changing (or increased) load capacities over time, however, most of these causes could be picked up early enough, and thus prevented, with regular maintenance under a SLA.
By having a SLA in place, all of the maintenance is taken care of, and in the event of a mechanical breakdown, the provider’s response time to such an emergency is guaranteed. If they do not honour the response time, the organisation has recourse by means of the agreement. The primary reason behind any maintenance agreement is to ensure system reliability and safety, which is why it’s important to include maintenance in the SLA. Agreements with inclusive preventive maintenance inspections have been shown to yield a high degree of equipment reliability and safety and, when emergencies arise, standard industry practice gives preferential response times to customers with agreements. Customers without SLAs are at the mercy of their service providers, having to wait until their issues can be addressed, at the service provider’s convenience. Furthermore, service providers usually stock their spare parts according to the number of systems under agreement and their corresponding geographical locations, so businesses are much more likely to get back up and running without delay, with a SLA in place.
In short, companies need to bear in mind that their uninterruptible power supply is not actually uninterruptible. With so much that can potentially go wrong, having a SLA that puts the responsibility of maintenance and repair with the UPS service provider, within a certain time frame, makes good business sense.
By Marco da Silva, Managing Director at Jasco Power
