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The "9's" of Reliable Power
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Reliability |
OK For |
Expected Outages/Year |
| Three 9's |
99.9% |
Homes |
9 hours |
| Four 9's |
99.99% |
Factories |
59 minutes |
| Five 9's |
99.999% |
Hospitals |
5 minutes |
| Six 9's |
99.9999% |
Banks |
32 seconds |
| Nine 9's |
99.99999% |
Digital
Markets |
30 Msec |
Bell Labs Study: 87% of downtime is due
to interruptions (voltage sags) lasting no more than 1/2
second! But this is more than enough time to shutdown
critical production processes. With digital controls
everywhere (high-tech manufacturing plants,
transportation, TV/Radio, telecom, etc.) power quality
events have become more costly then ever. Estimates for
costs associated with outages range from $35 billion to
$150 billion per year!
Average Downtime Cost Per Industry*
• Cellular Communications $41,000/hr
• Telephone Ticket Sales $72,000/hr
• Airline Reservations $90,000/hr
• Credit Card Operations $2.58
million/hr
• Brokerage Operations $6.48 million/hr
• Microchip Manufacture $1
million/minute
* Source of Data: Power Engineering
magazine 4/2002
The following chart gives the usually
desired power availability and reliability in "9's" for
various applications. Each successive increase in
reliability is met by having greater equipment support
through redundancy in protection and other design means
and at increasing cost. We can assist you in determining
how best to meet your reliability goals without adding
excessive cost or complexity.
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