cloud management
Service !
Is your service provider actually providing a service ? Is your UPS equipment up to scratch ? Michael Brooks , managing director at MPower UPS talks us through what clients should expect , as well as what to watch out for .
No matter how sturdy and state-of-the-art your UPS equipment , it can ’ t always be relied on to look after itself . Therefore , it is necessary to implement a planned UPS maintenance programme for ongoing , reliable operation and safe upkeep of the system . Preventative UPS maintenance is the way to go , to keep one step ahead of issues or breakdowns before they occur .
However , when discussing the installation of new UPS systems , the most common question we get relating to maintenance is : ‘ Will we be tied-in to MPower ?’ Our answer is , no . It seems to be a worrying trend in the industry where companies sell a UPS system and then tie clients in to an expensive maintenance and service contract .
Expensive is perfectly okay if you get what you pay for and if the contractor does a good job . However , increasingly we are seeing examples where this is not the case . Regular fault diagnostics may be completed but major issues have been missed .
For example ; one new client had questioned the quality of the service being provided by the previous contractor . They asked us : ‘ Do your engineers ever have a walk around the facility and do a visual check ?’ Intuitively , they were concerned that their previous company contractor had simply arrived , plugged in a laptop to complete the diagnostics and then left . The customer subsequently undertook a visual check only to discover a number of battery modules had been partially removed . Obviously at some point a battery fault had been flagged and the batteries withdrawn to stop the alarm , leaving the system vulnerable with a shorter than expected run time . The maintenance report made no mention of batteries being removed .
Remote monitoring
‘ What about remote monitoring ?’ is also high on the list of frequently asked questions . ‘ Does it leave my system open to hacking or cyberattack ?’ The answer is no . Remote monitoring simply enables faults to be identified from a separate
40 | September 2017