Power management vendor ABB has launched a medium voltage uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with multi-megawatt ratings and a claim of 99.5% efficiency.

ABB will first launch the PCS100 MV UPS series into the Chinese market, with a full global launch to follow.

ABB Power Conditioning general manager for the global product line John Penny said where the US market was once the crucial proving ground, China is an interesting market for large UPS products.

“It is now a major research center for much of the world’s high technology industry,” Penny said.

China’s huge industrial output, with hundreds of huge electronics factories consuming from tens to hundreds of megawatts of power, makes it a crucial market for medium voltage, Penny said.

He said in these circumstances, the careful handling of power by medium voltage systems is a great survival skill in the competition of China’s SME sector.

“Factory designers can now locate the power protection more remotely in a centralized location remote from the production floors,” Penny said.

“Our customers demand better reliability, efficiency, ruggedness and small footprint. This has been the focus for our design team and we have delivered.”

The new line is a departure from ABB’s larger installed base of low voltage PCS100 UPS products, which have typically sold into the Chinese semiconductor factory sector, protecting them from voltage sags and outages.

The new PCS100 MV UPS is industrially rated but is also suited to mega data centers.

“The growth in cloud computing and colocation has led to huge scale data centers being built and these are very similar to semiconductor fabrication plants in both scale and critical loads,” Penny said.

He added that the trend towards free air cooling and centralized protection will favor MV UPS protection with an industrially rated product.