Latest news on uninterruptible power supply

Our study suggests that for the foreseeable future — by 2025 — MV UPS systems are unlikely to be used by significantly more operators than today. Distributed uninterruptible power systems with batteries will also continue to be favored by only a relative few (mostly cloud operators).

Some clear trends emerge, notably that centralized UPS systems will likely continue to dominate in data centers with at least 1 megawatt of IT capacity, especially in those owned by enterprises and colocation providers.

Centralized, 3-phase UPS systems will continue to dominate for the next few years, at least, even though problems with batteries, product reliability and safety, in addition to other factors, are likely to persist.

Perhaps the biggest force of change to how UPS systems will be deployed in the future will be battery technologies — although, as discussed in Distributed UPS with batteries, there is still concern or skepticism over new approaches, such as the use of Li-ion batteries.

Some cloud respondents have a small portion (10% to 20%) of distributed power protection in their facilities today, while one cloud operator (in the Asia-Pacific region) reports 50%; none expect these proportions to change by 2025. What, then, are the barriers to adopting or increasing distributed approaches?

But, as our study shows, sometimes it is simply that an approach is too new, and therefore considered unproven, especially for enterprises and the colocation providers that serve them. Our study suggests that for the foreseeable future — by 2025 — MV UPS systems are unlikely to be used by significantly more operators than today.