How reliable is your ups? Eliminating single points of failure

Industrial UPS systems in floating offshore oil and gas platforms supply power to critical loads and require extremely high reliability and uptime. UPS configuration can have a major impact on reliability and uptime, and while there are several UPS topologies available on the market, space constraints can limit options. It is important to understand topology, and how the components that make up a UPS system operate and impact reliability. This paper outlines a particular UPS topology chosen for a floating offshore oil and gas production platform with reliability vs. space constraint trade-off challenges, identifies particular reliability concerns, and outlines different solutions with their associated advantages and disadvantages.