ENERGY MANAGEMENT
IMPLEMENTING A POWER RESILIENCE STRATEGY As with most public sector organisations, councils hold and maintain significant personal information, necessitating a secure and stable power supply to protect and preserve data and servers in the event of energy supply issues and to avoid disruption to vital services. South Staffordshire W hen Council wanted to implement a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) system, it called on Powerstar, a leading energy storage and power resilience specialist, to advise on how best to futureproof its energy demands, while working towards net zero. Here, Alastair Morris, Chief Commercial Officer of Powerstar, outlines the South Staffordshire project requirements and highlights the benefits of a holistic approach to power resilience across public sector organisations.
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Alastair explains: “South Staffordshire Council approached us looking to implement UPS to protect their site, critical data and equipment, from the risk of power disruptions. Traditionally, a UPS system has proved an effective solution, so long as the system is properly maintained. However, the council wanted to implement a power resilience strategy that also supported their net-zero goals, including the ability to store power generated from their existing 100kW solar array. As part of their onsite
power generation, the council also wanted to bolster their income by introducing a new revenue stream via exporting excess energy to the grid.” Powerstar’s recommendation was to install a battery energy storage system (BESS), instead of a traditional UPS system, to provide critical power supply during outages while additionally offering significant energy management benefits not available from a traditional UPS. While, as noted, traditional UPS functions well in many scenarios, to protect IT and data services and equipment
in the event of disruption to power supply, it is an option that looks increasingly untenable in a world moving to net zero. Most of the time, a UPS will be sitting idle, but it is still using power and costing money as it switches constantly back and forth from AC to DC – a loss of capacity estimated at between 10 and 15%. For a BESS, the capacity loss is significantly lower, at around 1%. At the heart of a smart microgrid, a BESS provides the security to protect the entire site during power disruptions while bringing significant additional benefits, including those sought by South Staffordshire Council. Powerstar installed a 250kW BESS, into an existing room on site at the premises, and this now provides full, site-wide UPS, but also enables the council to store excess power from its solar array and to export power to the grid for additional
