Case study of deployment of 400V DC power with 400V/-48VDC conversion

400V DC power is an emerging power architecture for a variety of applications, including telecommunications central offices. Compared to -48V DC power architectures, 400V DC power can significantly reduce the copper cabling and installation costs of power distribution infrastructure within a site. Because there is limited availability of 400V DC powered telecom equipment today, an attractive distribution architecture may be to distribute 400V DC power over long cable runs and convert 400V DC to -48V DC near the -48V DC powered equipment loads. A major Canadian communications provider recently deployed this architecture in order to power -48V DC equipment at an evaluation site. Because the site's power room was far from the new -48V DC equipment that was to be powered, using 400V DC power distribution significantly reduced the cabling cost and installation labor cost of the power infrastructure. The use of a high efficiency 400V/-48VDC converter system then allowed the operator to continue using common -48V DC powered equipment. This paper will present a case study of the installation of a 30kW 400V DC power system and a 400V/-48V converter system in a Canadian telecom site. It will cover the operator's decision making process, a comparison of the project installation costs compared to a traditional -48V DC architecture, and the operator's experience utilizing 400V DC power.