Current status of data center power supply and distribution system
1) Traditional UPS technology lags far behind the development of data centers.
The trend of “silicon advancing while copper retreats” has become a major development trend in the power electronics field. After the replacement of power devices such as MOSFETs and IGBTs, the widespread application of DSPs and digital circuits, and the gradual maturation of new topologies such as LLC, soft switching, and three-level inverters, high frequency, digitalization, and intelligence have become the mainstream trends in electronic products. Traditional analog circuit devices such as transformers and filter inductors, represented by “copper,” are gradually being replaced by digital circuit devices such as microcontrollers, control chips, and new semiconductor power devices, represented by “silicon.” It is the extensive application of “silicon” that has led to increasingly smaller, more efficient, and faster electronic products, a trend particularly evident in the IT field, such as blade servers and atomic routers. In the consumer electronics field, this is reflected in increasingly thinner mobile phones and smaller set-top boxes. For the UPS industry, “copper” represents the isolation transformer of traditional industrial frequency UPS, while “silicon” represents more intelligent high-frequency UPS. The extensive use of “silicon” has made UPS more intelligent, as software requirements are increasing, and UPS has transformed from a traditional hardware product into a product combining hardware and software. Meanwhile, from an environmental perspective, copper is a non-renewable resource, while silicon mainly comes from sand and has huge reserves. Therefore, whether considering from a technical or economic cost perspective, “silicon in, copper out” will inevitably be an important trend in the development of UPS systems.
Multiple factors hinder the advancement of UPS technology. Compared to the rapid pace of technological updates in consumer electronics, the progress of power supply and distribution products for data centers has been significantly slower. This is primarily because the “infrastructure” nature of power supply and distribution products means that customers rarely replace them unless they break down. I myself have seen a UPS launched by Huawei more than ten years ago still in use in a carrier’s data center. Furthermore, some equipment manufacturers, driven by their own interests, have further hampered the application of new technologies in the UPS field. As a result, traditional line-frequency UPS units can still be frequently seen in newly built data centers in China.