Multi-Input Power System with Shared Reserve
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Solution Overview
Problem
High capital and operational costs associated with fully redundant power systems in data centers, as they often require significant reserved capacity that is underutilized, leading to inefficiencies and increased costs for installation and maintenance.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a power system with multi-input devices and shared reserve power, where electrical devices receive power from multiple primary systems and a shared reserve system, utilizing redundant automatic transfer switches to ensure failover redundancy while allowing greater utilization of primary system capacity under normal conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a fully redundant secondary power system is implemented, then reliability is improved, but capital costs and operational costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple primary power systems into a shared configuration where their combined capacity provides backup support. Instead of each system having its own dedicated backup, the capacity of multiple primary systems is pooled together to create a shared reserve that protects all of them, reducing total backup capacity requirements while maintaining reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The shared reserve power system serves multiple primary power systems simultaneously, making it a universal backup resource. The same reserve capacity can back up any of the primary systems that fail, rather than requiring separate dedicated backup systems for each primary system, thereby reducing overall capacity requirements.
2Reliability
If reserved capacity is increased for redundancy, then reliability is improved, but utilization of primary system capacity decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically allocates power capacity between active use and backup reserve based on real-time conditions. During normal operation, primary systems operate at high utilization. When a failure occurs, the shared reserve dynamically activates to provide backup power, allowing the system to optimize between utilization and reliability rather than maintaining static over-provisioning.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of reserve capacity allocation from individual dedicated reserves to a shared pooled reserve. This parameter change allows the same capacity to serve multiple functions - acting as active power during normal operation and as backup power when needed, thereby increasing overall utilization while maintaining failover redundancy.
3Reliability
If fully redundant power systems are implemented, then failover redundancy is improved, but installation and maintenance costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple primary power systems and their backup requirements into a unified shared reserve architecture. This merging reduces the total number of redundant components needed compared to fully redundant systems, simplifying installation and maintenance while preserving failover capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of creating full physical copies of entire power systems for redundancy, the patent uses a simplified shared reserve model where capacity is virtually allocated and managed. This approach captures the essential backup function without duplicating all the infrastructure, reducing installation and maintenance complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A power system for multi-input devices with shared reserve power includes a first automatic transfer switch (ATS) and a second ATS each coupled at respective inputs to a primary power system and a reserve power system. An output of one of the ATSs is coupled to first power input of a multi-input electrical device and an output of the other ATS is coupled to a second power input of the multi-input electrical device. When primary power is available, electrical power is fed to both the inputs of the multi-input electrical device and when primary power is not available reserve power is fed to both inputs of the multi-input electrical device. If a component fails between the primary and/or reserve power system and the multi-input electrical device, a full load of the multi-input electrical device is fed from a non-affected one of the inputs of the multi-input electrical device.