Active Power released these findings and supporting evidence in its latest whitepaper, “Improving Sustainability with Flywheel UPS” (#120). The paper shows that the amount of damage battery UPS systems do to the environment is significant and is overlooked by facility operators. These products require hundreds of thousands of pounds of lead to be installed, replaced and recycled over their lifespan, waste electricity and emit too much carbon and pollution.
Active Power’s flywheel UPS systems are up to 98 percent energy efficient, have an operating temperature range to 40 degrees Celsius thus requiring less cooling, and offer permanent energy storage. These inherent advantages enable customers to deploy a UPS solution that uses 90 percent less carbon in its manufacturing and emits 40 percent less carbon over a 15-year period compared to battery UPS products. Customers also remove the leading root cause of downtime in mission critical applications – batteries. Non-detectable and detectable battery failures account for more than 80 percent of all failures in battery based UPS products, even with monitoring and routine maintenance.[1]
With nearly 5,000 flywheels in systems deployed worldwide to date, Active Power has prevented approximately 16,000 metric tons of lead from being mined, smelted and deployed and reduced approximately 850,000 metric tons of carbon emissions. Just as important, the company has saved customers an estimated $225 million in electricity and battery replacement costs.
“Ultimately, the C-suite is interested in the overall cost and business value of the proposition and has the power to demand financial prudence from operations teams,” said Daniel Bizo, senior analyst, Datacenter Technologies, at 451 Research. “When combined with benefits in carbon footprint reduction, this should tip the balance in Active Power’s favor in many more bids as lead-acid batteries are environmentally damaging and are hazardous to manufacture, operate and dispose of.”
“Our sustainability efforts have to make economic sense for our customers,” said Christiaan Keet, chief technology officer, at Hydro66, a British-based colocation data center provider who deployed an Active Power CleanSource® HD UPS at its 100 percent hydroelectric facility in northern Sweden last year. “In addition to its green benefits, the flywheel UPS, with its high efficiency and battery free design, enables us to offer a minimum of 50 percent annual cost savings to our customers. The UPS solution aligns with our ethos of viewing sustainability as a natural extension of operations.”
This sustainability message is part of Active Power’s “40/12/9 Promise” which highlights the benefits of the company’s products and solutions: 40 percent lower total cost of ownership, 12 times less likely to fail and 9 times less carbon emissions than battery UPS options. Customers have a growing desire to simultaneously cut spending and reduce environmental impact. The economic and environmental benefits of its innovative energy storage technology enable Active Power customers to meet their budgetary and environmental goals.
“We challenge operators as well as the C-suite to examine their critical backup power equipment as a way to reduce their overall power consumption and meet their commitments to reduce human impact on the environment,” said Mark A. Ascolese, president and CEO, at Active Power. “With our flywheel UPS, individuals and organizations can decide to reduce global warming by simply choosing this technology over one that pollutes and is dangerous to handle and dispose of. The combination of high energy efficiency and permanent energy storage eliminates the cost and headaches associated with lead acid batteries altogether and saves thousands of tons of carbon over the life of our solution, making it the smart, responsible choice for the environment.”
