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WHY TODAY’S ELECTRONICS DEMAND SUPERIOR PROTECTION

We all know the importance of uptime in our industry. Quite frankly, this applies to any industry. That said, there are many factors working against us – one of the most obvious being power. The power grid—developed in the early 1900s to power analog equipment such as light bulbs and motors—is antiquated and overstressed. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave our power grid a grade of D+ due to neglected maintenance.

Screen Shot 2013-08-30 at 2.18.49 PMAlthough the power is usually on in North America that does not mean it is clean. Inconsistent power is one of the greatest factors affecting modern electronics, causing system lockups, board failures, resets, premature equipment failures, and ultimately high service and parts costs. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that power disturbances cost U.S. industry as much as $188 billion per year in lost data, material and productivity.

It’s clear that grid power is not ideal. However, a recent study from MIT discovered that most anomalies (up to 80%) occur inside the building, often referred to as the “micro-grid”. Such things as HVAC systems, elevators, microwaves and poor wiring wreak havoc on sensitive electronics as well. This shows that power protection needs to be available at the point-of-use, the plug.

Screen Shot 2013-08-30 at 2.20.34 PMThere are many manufacturers out there that claim to protect your electronics against power disturbances, but only offers superior protection. Innovolt is the only provider that protects against all of the one most commonly known disturbances and their resultant damaging effects while also being proven to actually reduce service calls. This competitive overview lists and defines the known grid disturbances, their damaging effects and which manufacturers protect your equipment against them.

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THE INNOVOLT ADVANTAGE

  1. Only Innovolt’s patented circuitry utilizes microprocessor- based line monitoring to actively protect against the current inrushes that result from short duration voltage sags. Current inrush limiting technology is inserted ahead of the load before the recovery from a voltage sag, remediating against harmful effects.
  2. The competition does not remediate the current inrush,the real damaging effect of under voltage events like Innovolt does. Taking both time and voltage into consideration, Innovolt does not immediately take the load offline for up to 2 s if not necessary, but instead remediates against the current inrush. This ensures full uptime, reducing nuisance trips. ESP’s Next Gen PCS takes the load offline in 150 ms (source: www. espei.com) and MX Power in 700 ms for the SP (source: www. memoryexpertsinc.com) when an undervoltage event is sensed and brings online when power is back within acceptable limits which may result in an unwanted equipment shutdown.
  3. There are two types of overvoltage situations: (a) catastrophic and (b) less lethal.
    1. Catastrophic overvoltage: Innovolt is the fastest in the industry to isolate the load (< 8 ms) vs. 100 ms for the ESP Next Gen PCS (source: www.espei.com) and 700 mS for the MX Power SP (source: www.memoryexpertsinc.com)
    2. Less Lethal: Innovolt takes time and voltage into consideration before isolating the load in the case of a non-catastrophic / less-lethal overvoltage due to the fact many electronics can survive short swells. Competitors use a threshold-based overvoltage limit, which may cause unnecessary nuisance trips.
  4. Although the least likely of all grid disturbances, voltage surge protection is typically achieved using metal oxide varistors (MOV). Over time, MOVs can be rendered useless by over voltage events. Innovolt technology not only protects the connected load against over voltages, but also the internal surge protection MOVs contained in the power protection appliance itself, ensuring long-term functionality of critical MOVs.

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