Having access to accurate and timely information is the key to success in any field in the world, and the Armed Forces are no exception. The U.S. Army was dispatched to Bosnia to serve as part of a peacekeeping force to help end the brutal conflict engulfing that region. In 1997, Army Intelligence, which was responsible for gathering, disseminating and forwarding vast quantities of information to the peacekeeping forces, ran into some problems. During much of their operation, utility power was unavailable. They also found that their UPS technology was not capable of handling the large numbers of spikes, surges, sags and brownouts that were present on the ac line. As a result, the back-up UPS systems they relied on to maintain their computer networks were actually burning out. When all their UPS were gone, they hooked their computers directly into the field generators set up in their camps. This caused catastrophic computer failure. Since an army with no information is no army at all, the U.S. Army turned to TSi Power to create a quick solution. Within a few weeks, the U.S. Army Intelligence was up and running without fear of burning up their UPS systems or their computers after installation of rugged, generator compatible line conditioners from TSi Power.

In 1989, a significant earthquake hit the San Francisco area causing millions of dollars in damage and interrupting the basic utilities for the area residents. Panic gripped many of the residents who immediately went to buy emergency food supplies, candles, flashlights, batteries, etc. TSi Power’s UPS systems were backing up three drug stores in San Francisco at the time of the earthquake. These drug stores were open a full eight hour business day entirely on TSi back-up power. The drugs stores’ point-of-sale (POS) computers equipped with these UPS systems continued to operate and record unprecedented sales because all the other drug stores were shut down. This incident convinced the drug store’s corporate executives that extended battery UPS systems were a necessity for uninterrupted operation of retail stores during emergency situations. TSi has the solution for all retail and service industry power protection and back-up power problems!

A leading manufacturer of medical technologies for critical care patients. Since 1990, SMD has been using a customized version of TSi Power’s UPS and Battery Extension Units to provide continuous ac power to respirators of critically ill patients. The respirator and UPS system are attached to the patient’s portable bed and moved around inside the hospital (e.g. from the operating room to the recovery room) by simply unplugging the UPS from the ac socket. In order to meet the stringent European medical equipment safety standards, TSi Power’s engineers worked closely with manufacturer’s engineers to implement the necessary modifications to the existing models.

A major cellular infrastructure supplier’s experience has revealed that conventional surge protection devices have little impact on equipment failures and often fail themselves as a result of inadequate power generation and distribution infrastructures. In thousands of installations worldwide, AEC equipment has proven to consistently reduce high failure rates of telecom rectifiers, UPS, and other equipment connected to the power line. Critical loads such as base transceiver stations (BTS) and nodes for wireless-in-the-local-loop applications as well as other outdoor enclosure installations often require this additional protection.

In 1996, TSi Power was asked to assist a large farming product manufacturer in the middle of Georgia. Nearly one hundred cabinets that control the automated manufacturing equipment had to be manually reset after each power outage (even though they were protected by a well-known, national brand UPS). Each manual reset operation meant a down-time of over one hours for the entire plant and financial losses were piling up quickly, especially during summer months when a number of power outages can occur in a week.

After careful analysis of the problem, TSi engineers concluded that the problem was caused by a lack of voltage regulation, lack of isolation and power conditioning, and long transfer time (up to 8 milliseconds) of the existing standby UPS units. They recommended the Premium Series UPS-16000 with built in CVT (constant voltage transformer with 100% input/output isolation) and zero transfer time. The result was spectacular. The controller cabinet protected by the TSi Power Premium Series no longer required a manual reset after a power outage while the identical control cabinet powered by the original standby UPS needed a manual reset after each power outage.

By the middle of 1997, the manufacturing plant management decided to replace all of their existing UPS units with TSi Power Premium Series UPS-16000 units. TSi Power is also helping in the disposal of the old standby UPS units that are being replaced since the lead-acid batteries inside the old UPS units must be recycled properly.