OREANDA-NEWS. August 27, 2012. GE’s (NYSE: GE) Digital Energy business today announced the launch of its new VH Series Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system, engineered to provide high reliability power protection in a small, modern design. The VH Series Single Phase UPS is a true voltage and frequency independent (VFI), double conversion technology that can provide secure power for all business-critical applications.

The VH Series UPS uses VFI technology to protect critical electrical systems against power disturbances and frequency fluctuations from the utility, ensuring continuous delivery of a clean sinewave to critical loads. When peak loads exceed the specification of the UPS, its featured failsafe bypass creates an immediate and seamless transfer from inverter to bypass, ensuring a continuous supply of power to the load. The VH Series is capable of rapid switchovers to and from bypass due to the use of a static switch instead of a less reliable relay.

According to Boston Computing Network a recent report on data loss in Europe, estimated that over 6 percent of PCs will suffer data loss in any year—a total of 1.7 million incidents of which some 42 percent are due to hardware failure, including damage by power surge and drive failure.

“What voltage may be okay for a light bulb or refrigerator, in terms of utility performance, is not acceptable in today’s digitized world,” said Riccardo Rutili, product leader for power quality at GE’s Digital Energy business. “GE’s VH Series UPS is designed to meet the high performance power delivery needs of both the IT industry and the ever-increasing list of power-hungry systems such as MRI machines, critical servers and sensitive, critical electrical loads.”

Utilizing easily swappable batteries, the VH Series enables safe, fast battery replacement with less than one minute of reliance on utility power. The rapid replacement enables the critical load to remain connected at all times, effectively eliminating downtime. These batteries supply enough power for the UPS either to ride out an average utility failure or to perform a safe shutdown of the load in the event of an extended utility failure. GE’s Superior Battery Management optimizes the condition of the battery and protects the core component of the UPS, enabling GE to offer an impressive, three-year warranty on both the UPS and battery.

When it comes to charging, the UPS is able to select between boost and float charging to provide a fast recharge within two hours and to minimize damage to the battery. Charging for the VH Series battery is both temperature and load dependent. The end of discharge voltage cut off prevents against deep discharges, resulting in more battery life cycles. The Superior Battery Management and use of fast switching static switches, rather than relays, increase the reliability of the UPS. Additionally, its laser printer mode enables the UPS to operate with high peak loads without transferring to battery. Other UPS technology flips between battery and standard operation, repeatedly discharging the battery for short bursts. This process not only damages the battery, it also shortens the life of the battery.

The VH Series UPS replaces GE’s mature GT Series product line and provides advanced technical benefits to the user. The new UPS features integrated automatic shutdown software, GE’s Superior Battery Management and a wide range of communication options including USB port as standard, with the option of RS232, relay and SNMP card slots. Additionally, the VH Series has a much smaller footprint, up to 50 percent smaller than GE’s previous GT Series, which minimizes the rack or floor space required for installation. Its robust design, with laser printer mode and high-peak load handling ability, suits non-standard loads commonly seen in critical processes and motor-type loads.

GE’s new UPS can be set up in either a tower or rack-mount formation, allowing users to adjust the installation process as network demands change. Its 0.9 output power factor delivers more actual power than previous UPS models, making the VH Series better suited to today’s power-hungry data center and server room PCs. The UPS also features a 0.99 input power factor, preventing disturbances from being fed back onto the utility. It has been designed from the bench up to meet new UL standards set to be implemented in 2014.