Rule-based algorithm predicts UPS failure

Article By : R. Colin Johnson

PredictPulse Insight monitors the UPS's components, tracking discharge history and determining when 90% of the UPS's lifetime has been used up.

U.S. company Eaton Corporation has rolled out a cloud-based software, which it says will ensure universal power supplies (UPSes) will keep computers up and running all day, every day.

Called PredictPulse Insight, the software monitors the UPS's components with a rule-based algorithm that tracks the batteries' discharge history and determines when "80-to-90% of the UPS's lifetime has been used up for the battery, capacitors, fans, air filters, and, if equipped, the power module [inverter, rectifier and the insulated gate bipolar transistor]," said Art Mulligan, product line manager at Eaton Corp.

The UPS is just the beginning, according to Mulligan, who said its roadmap was to expand to other brands of UPS so that the single monitoring software dashboard could handle all of the UPSes in a large data centere, and expand to other components besides the UPS.

Today, PredictPulse Insight monitors over 200 data points within Eaton UPSes and is being upgraded to monitor the data points available for other UPS brands.

__Figure 1:__ *Uninterruptible Power Supplies are monitored by Eaton’s cloud subscription software either daily or every 15 minutes with its status information appearing on the PredictPulse dashboard where an alarm notifies the user on their mobile device if preventative maintenance is required. (Source: Eaton)*

"Eaton considers PredictPulse Insight its first application, but the company is currently exploring expanding its capabilities into other predictive analytic critical infrastructure spaces, such as vehicle and aerospace applications," said Mulligan.

Eaton is a variety of Internet of Things (IoT) services that can predict at least 80 to 90% of the component failures in a variety of devices, such as vehicle transmissions before they happen.