Who is not familiar with the serious consequences of mains interruptions or even failures? The switched-on light is interrupted for milliseconds, the computer screen goes dark, and the computer reboots. These are unmistakable signs of a brief mains failure. Bad luck if you have not saved the program that you have just written. Even worse if the controllers crash during the production process. This means a system standstill and an extreme emergency. Fast help is especially needed. However, many unpleasant surprises can be avoided with suitable preventative measures.
In practice, short voltage dips of up to 20ms occur, for example, when the local power supply company switches between two mains systems. Failures up to 200ms result from the poor mains quality in use throughout the world or arise when machines with a high starting power are started in the customer's own network. Longer interruptions, on the other hand, are caused by damaged supply lines or other serious faults. However, even short term voltage depressions can lead to controller failure, system restarts or the expensive destruction of instruments and products when a machine restarts improperly. In international competition, a manufacturer who can keep production under control even under these adverse conditions will therefore have a competitive edge.
Phoenix Contact offers a technically advanced range of 24VDC modular power supplies that is a fully developed resource for maximum system availability worldwide. Different solution concepts are available, depending on the requirement, including 20A, 200ms buffer modules through to 40A modules with full battery back-up, offering buffer times up to three hours.
