The usage of Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) has been employed for the past 3 or 4 decades but its common usage is quite recent. Traditionally, UPS were used to ensure power to critical systems, in times of a power outage, and the continual output of conditioned power to critical devices and applications that could not withstand power fluctuations of voltage and current.
Today, in Semiconductor and all critical manufacturing, generators are employed to supplant power from the utility. In some facilities, UPS are employed with the generators to enjoin a power train for critical applications. Without the usage of UPS, generators, and ancillary equipment, today’s semiconductor facilities are faced with product loss, process loss, and business disruption entailing millions of dollars per event.
In 1989, a transformer exploded in the mezzanine section of a single semiconductor facility building in New York State. Upon the loss of power, the following events occurred. All of the electricity was lost, all process equipment lost their process information, all chemicals, etchers, and resist were shunted to drain automatically, all rinse tanks were shunted to drain automatically, all product in-situ to a production or manufacturing process was lost or scrapped, hundreds of employees were furloughed for 48 hours, and only wafers not in-situ process were saved. The loss to the manufacturer was a total of $12,000,000 (1989 $). This did not entail the loss of productivity for a 24/7 facility nor the retail value of the finished product destroyed during wafer fabrication.
The usage of a UPS and generator could not have prevented the transformer explosion, but it can help in the determination of mission-critical systems. By engaging the power issues on a macro and micro scale, the criticality of all systems can be determined. Once the mission-critical systems are identified, the systematic implementation of a power train regimen can be employed. This regimen can save millions of dollars in lost transactions, lost data, lost processes, and ultimately loss of revenue.
During the Power outage on August 14, 2003 at 4:11 PM when New York City went dark, many financial companies were engaged in the accounting and clearinghouse functions of the transactions on the financial exchanges that closed only 11 minutes earlier. For those companies with power train utilization of UPS, generators, Automatic Transfer Switches (ATS), ancillary equipment, and monitoring/management systems of their clean IT environments, there was no loss of data, transactions, or disruption of business. Their mission-critical facilities, IT infrastructure, IT environment, and business were undisturbed.
From: “Clean Power, Dirty Power – No Power”
