In this episode Allen hosts Pete DeMar, who has over 50 years of experience in the stationary battery industry, shared his background and expertise in battery failure analysis. Al Warner, with a history of involvement in batteries since his time on the farm, shared his experiences in the military and the UPS industry, highlighting his learning journey and continued interest in battery maintenance.

Episode Highlights

4:53 – I was, I guess, the whistleblower for VRLA batteries. I had, the main manufacturer at the time come to my location and had a battery assembled for them. I showed them every problem that they have with them. So IEEE came out with a document called IEEE 1188, and that became the standard for maintenance of VRLA batteries.

11:56 – UPS batteries are the heart of the UPS system. If you don't have a battery, it's not uninterruptible so battery maintenance is critical.

22:28 – Control algorithms that monitor the batteries kind of put the customer to sleep believing that the UPS is going to give them a warning before it fails, but that doesn't always happen.

22:28 – A brownout is where the utility lowers the voltage so they can provide for a few more customers and then there's of course the famous blackout and rolling blackouts.

29:24 – A totally separate problem that we have not actually discussed is, there are two things and one of those is, with large UPSs and DC battery systems, the arc flash calculations, they are way off.

49:35 – They're relying on the electronics to Safely take care of their batteries. Same thing is true with UPSs. They rely on the electronics and no inspection It's out of mind, out of sight.

In this episode of DC Power Hour, Allen along with special guests Al Warner and Fran Losey discuss how AI growth, along with data center growth and the required electrification, affect the powering infrastructure.

Episode Highlights

6:03 – Do you agree with me when I say that the politicians are those that try to enforce these laws or make the suggestions?

3:57 – It's critical that people who have our level of experience speak out when we see a need for the younger generation to understand what we've went through. We've learned a lot of lessons. In the power industry and being able to communicate those. And today's topic is probably near and dear to my heart.

10:32 – The number one lesson that I took away from the National Power Lapse study was that before the actual outage, where the power just goes to zero, there's usually a voltage sag and power supplies traditionally are designed to withstand a certain amount of voltage sag and outage.

16:06 – A brownout is where the utility lowers the voltage so they can provide for a few more customers and then there's of course the famous blackout and rolling blackouts.

19:51 – The reality of today's grid, which needs a massive upgrade, as we've said before, is it needs to be redesigned because the whole backbone of the US grid is the problem.

31:46 – We had a crew come to our, our property and they were trimming the limbs. I said take these down because they're going to be a problem and the guy said, no they don't pay me to do that. The next year we had limbs from those trees hanging on our power line and we had an outage.

In this episode of DC Power Hour, Allen along with special guests Al Warner and Fran Losey discuss how AI growth, along with data center growth and the required electrification, affect the powering infrastructure.

Episode Highlights

6:03 – Do you agree with me when I say that the politicians are those that try to enforce these laws or make the suggestions?

10:42 – What do you see happening in some of those big data centers you work in?

17:17 – Do you know the rack requirements for hyperscale deployments are 10 to 14kW per rack in existing data centers, and they're estimating this is going to rise to 40 to 60kW rack?

27:33 – Question: I got three strings in parallel, I lose 1 string, what's my run time? And everybody will say 2/3rds. Answer: Not even close!

32:09 – Who has the most experience with micro-nuclear plants? The United States Navy. If we can power aircraft carriers, we can power cities with these plants.