This reliable and cost-effective approach offers a number of
advantages for operations that really want to go "green."Power
disturbances pose a colossal problem for all businesses. The
Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimates that such
disturbances cost U.S. industry as much as $188 billion per year
in lost data, material and productivity. Efforts to minimize
these losses have taken on their own monumental proportions.
According to industry analysts at the Darnell Group, annual
spending on backup-power systems exceeds $5 billion worldwide.
Traditional backup-power solutions include uninterruptible power
systems (UPSs) with valve-regulated lead acid (VRLA) batteries
to provide energy during short-term power disturbances, diesel
generators (gensets) for longer-term outages and control
electronics to bridge the two. Therein lies a real challenge for
businesses that are seriously concerned about matters of
sustainability: It's all those batteries. The lead-acid
batteries that provide ride-through, or