Active Power Receives $5 Million Order For Its PowerHouse System

Published: 24-Aug-2009

Active Power, Inc. (Active Power), a US-based manufacturer of power solutions incorporating uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, has received significant orders amounting to nearly $5 million for its PowerHouse system. These orders will provide containerized, mission critical power and cooling infrastructure to support several containerized datacenter deployments.

The systems are anticipated to ship in 2009 and are destined for several US locations. These implementations will be made in conjunction with Active Power’s containerized datacenter partners.

Rated at 240 kW, the first containerized system will include a standby generator, Active Power’s CleanSource 300 kVA UPS, a generator starting module, switchgear and chiller. The second and third containerized systems are each rated at 480 kW and will include a standby generator, a CleanSource 600 kVA UPS, a generator starting module, switchgear and chiller. For both orders, Active Power is contracted to provide full turnkey solutions that will drive additional service revenues over a multi-year period.

“We are helping these two customers do more with less with this infrastructure containerization approach,” said Jim Clishem, president and chief executive officer, Active Power. “We are able to support the customer’s expanding datacenter capacity while reducing capital expenditures by as much as 25% and operating expenses by as much as 60% – as compared to using a conventional brick-and-mortar approach.”

The increased cost and demand for energy and space efficient solutions has magnified the need for more integrated, intuitively designed and cost effective alternative technologies for datacenters. And with more global server manufacturers introducing containerized datacenters to market, this begs the question of how to power and cool these IT containers in a modular and portable fashion, all while saving operators money and increasing overall system reliability. With PowerHouse, operators can rapidly deploy additional datacenter capacity and the associated power and cooling infrastructure in a fraction of the time it takes to do a component by component build out.

PowerHouse is a novel solution that leverages the innate advantages of Active Power’s flywheel UPS technology and integrates all of the key components needed for a complete continuous power system packaged in a shipping type container. At up to 98% energy efficient, the flywheel-based UPS system anchors PowerHouse, providing extreme power density and the ability to sustain operating temperatures up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit. These key differentiators represent a tremendous barrier to entry for conventional battery based UPS technologies while providing more value to the datacenter client.

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