2009-07-22 - High technology visual effects company Weta Digital, well known internationally for their academy award winning productions such as “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong”, has installed ABB’s Active Voltage Conditioners (AVC) into their state-of-the-art datacentre in Wellington, New Zealand.
Energy consumption is a major concern for the Weta team and they instructed their lead engineering consultant, Richard Snow from Intellex, to investigate the most energy effective options for power protection of their new datacentre installation.
Richard comments, “on investigating the sites operational requirements we found not all of the sites computing loads required UPS hold-up. Weta could accommodate an infrequent power outage on quite a large proportion of loads, but still wanted to maintain a very high level of voltage protection. As a result, we choose ABB’s locally manufactured Active Voltage Conditioners. With a system efficiency approaching 99%, very significant energy savings were achieved over the alternative of UPS protection where the best we could expect was mid 90’s at realistic loading levels. This means Weta achieve very significant energy savings.”
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Richard Snow onsite at Weta alongside the installation of the first AVC. |
So far one AVC has been installed, with the second recently delivered to site.
Wellington based ABB sales manager Fiona Hodgson was involved in all aspects of the project through to commissioning. Fiona highlights the features of the product:
“The
Active Voltage Conditioner proved very easy to commission, as well as offering a very high level of protection against voltage sags and surges. It also provides an online regulated supply. Their double redundant design means ongoing high levels of protection are assured.”
ABB's Active Voltage Conditioner
The AVC Standard (Active Voltage Conditioner) is an inverter based system that protects sensitive industrial and commercial loads from voltage disturbances. It provides fast, accurate voltage sag and surge correction as well as continuous voltage regulation and load voltage compensation. It has been optimally designed to provide the required equipment immunity from the level of voltage sags expected on the AC supply network.