Precision Event Recording For Critical Power Systems

Has your facility ever experienced an electrical power disruption that brought your operations to a crippling halt and took a team hours (if not days) to diagnose? Were you ever able to identify the root cause of the power event that generated repair costs and a loss in revenue associated with the downtime?

Data centers, healthcare, communication, transportation, and precision manufacturing operations are just a few types of critical power facilities whose business, customers, patients, and other stakeholders rely heavily on reliable power that remains available 24/7.

Loss of power at a critical facility can have a significant impact. For example, when a data center goes down due to a power interruption or outage, everything being processed within that data center just stops...cloud storage networks, e-commerce sites, e-mail servers, VoIP communications, streaming services, etc. Consider these statistics from a 2023 Uptime Institute intelligence report entitled “Publicly Reported Outages”:

• 15% of data centers have reported power outage costs of up to $1 million dollars
• 43% of data centers have experienced business impacts from power outages over the past year
• 60% of data center failures resulted in losses of over $100 thousand dollars

What Electrical Power Anomaly Happened, And When Did It Occur?

As you may remember, this past June Trystar acquired Cyber Sciences in Murfreesboro TN, a manufacturer of electrical power monitoring, diagnostics, and analysis solutions known as “Sequence Of Events Recorders” (SERs). DIN-rail mounted within the electrical distribution equipment such as low voltage switchgear, these SERs are a crucial part of the electrical power monitoring system (EPMS). They quietly monitor many intelligent electrical devices (e.g., breakers, uninterruptible power supplies, automatic transfer switches, protective relays, and power distribution units) that comprise the electrical power system supporting critical facilities such as data centers and hospitals.

Think of an airplane’s “black box” - SERs operate in a similar manner.

Using Precision Time Protocol (PTP), SERs capture thousands of data points timestamped to 1 millisecond accuracy, precisely storing the data that led to the power disruption. This allows for better post event analysis in pinpointing exactly where the event started and how it cascaded throughout the system, thus minimizing any downtime if an outage occurs! By enabling facility managers and I.T. personnel to monitor the status and operation of thousands of pieces of equipment, SERs help identify potential problems before they lead to a power outage and greatly simplify the forensic process should an outage occur. Bottom line: SERs save time and money!

Read more about the benefits of incorporating SERs in data centers as well as Trystar’s additional products that support data center power reliability!