New Developments for Uninterruptible Power Supply Spec

February 16, 2011 - When the EPA announced last year that it would be developing an ENERGY STAR spec for uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), they noted that the number of UPS units installed in the U.S. would soon approach 400,000. They also projected that data center energy demands would be doubling every five years, making UPS efficiency even more critical.

Recently ENERGY STAR released the final draft of its test method. The Test Method serves as the basis for determining product compliance with the future specification.

As part of the newly released draft, ENERGY STAR has extended the dataset assembly period through March 18, 2011, splitting it into two phases.

• Phase 1: Sharing of existing test data (through January 14, 2011)
• Phase 2: New testing according to Draft ENERGY STAR Test Method (through March 18, 2011)

Summary data from the first phase was made available in a memo released this month. The memo can be downloaded from the ENERGY STAR Uninterruptible Power Supplies page. (See: UPS Stakeholder Memo Summarizing Test Results.)

The anticipated publication date for the final spec is July 15, 2011. With the spec in place, the EPA estimates that up to 710 million kWh per year of power currently consumed by UPSs can be avoided.

For further information, see the ENERGY STAR website.