How to balance your Capex and Opex by optimizing your investment and minimizing ongoing expenses
In today’s data center landscape, understanding the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a three-phase uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is crucial for sustainable and cost-effective operations. While the initial cost of purchasing a UPS is known, it doesn’t tell the full story of the savings you’ll achieve over time.
Schneider Electric’s Galaxy VXL UPS is designed with high efficiency – with class-one power protection and 99 percent efficiency in eConversion Mode, lowering operational cost. This patented technology, combined with a “pay-as-you-grow” modular approach and EcoCare membership, a next-generation service plan, not only optimizes capital investments but may also deliver a significant TCO savings together with operating expense optimization.
In this blog, we’ll explain how to balance your capital expenditure (Capex) and operational expenditure (Opex) by optimizing your investment and minimizing ongoing expenses. Ultimately, the goal is to show you how to maximize uptime by minimizing uncertainties and maintaining peak performance over your UPS’s full-service lifecycle.
Evaluating initial and ongoing expenses
When planning for a three-phase UPS, it’s essential to evaluate both initial and ongoing expenses to fully understand the investment over its lifetime. Upfront costs include the price of the UPS, installation, and footprint. The Galaxy VXL addresses these upfront concerns by reducing construction costs, thanks to its footprint, which is 52 percent smaller than the industry average, so it frees up more space for core data center operations.
Over the lifetime of a UPS, the cost of power usage and regular maintenance adds up. The Galaxy VXL helps reduce these ongoing costs with up to 97.5 percent efficiency in double conversion mode and an impressive 99 percent efficiency in TUV-certified eConversion mode, minimizing electricity loss and curbing power expenses. Battery replacement is another ongoing expense, but the Galaxy VXL’s flexible battery configuration allows users to choose the best option for their needs. Opting for VRLA batteries may offer additional savings, while switching to lithium-ion batteries can deliver further savings. With these efficiency gains and cost-saving features, the cost of ownership for the Galaxy VXL reveals an advantage over traditional three-phase UPS systems, making it a smart choice for long-term, cost-effective power management.
EcoCare for three-phase UPS, Schneider Electric’s next-generation service plan, transforms UPS management and maintenance by applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics to continuously monitor, manage alarms, assess the Galaxy VXL’s health, and anticipate any potential issues. This advanced approach provides an “extra set of eyes” and a detailed view of the system’s health. At-a-glance asset health index readings at a component level provide information regarding life expectancy for all the components. Based on its evolution, our experts from the Connected Services Hub analyze the situation and provide actionable recommendations to help reduce the risk of downtime and optimize assets’ lifespan by avoiding premature replacements and/or replacement of only needed parts.
A staggering 71 percent of outages stem from critical power and cooling failures, according to Uptime Institute. Over 40 percent are caused by human error, highlighting the need to get fast and effective support while minimizing interventions. Thanks to our asset maintenance index and a condition-based maintenance approach, we can also optimize on-site interventions by up to 50 percent. By combining IoT technology with digital analytics, EcoCare helps businesses adopt a proactive, targeted approach to system maintenance, anticipating potential issues before they escalate and reducing unnecessary resource expenditure.
Additionally, this service plan delivers insights and recommendations from our remote experts, including customer success management throughout the UPS lifecycle, which helps optimize UPS lifetime and boost uptime. When paired with the Galaxy VXL, EcoCare helps maximize uptime from day one by reducing on-site intervention, minimizing human error, and improving mean time to repair. Remote monitoring and priority access to technical support enable up to 70 percent risk reduction of unplanned downtime, ensuring a smoother, more cost-effective operation over the system’s lifecycle.
Future-proofing UPS systems for resilient infrastructure
As data demands grow, future-proofing data centers is essential to ensure they remain resilient, efficient, and adaptable. Increasing capacity within an existing building footprint, without causing overheating or requiring downtime, is no easy feat – especially as demand for data center capacity has reached unprecedented levels. With major data center industry players scaling their solutions, this trend is pushing the industry to store larger volumes of data. However, simply building more data centers may not be feasible in the near term due to construction delays and resource constraints. Data center operators must find ways to expand capacity within existing spaces while managing energy efficiency, uptime, sustainability, and operational costs.
The Galaxy VXL, coupled with EcoCare, is an ideal solution to help data centers meet these future demands and address TCO goals. This UPS system offers a high-density, modular design that optimizes space and provides a scalable platform for growth. The Galaxy VXL’s ability to add high-efficiency modules while remaining online, thanks to its Live Swap capability, allows for expansion without risking downtime or compromising operations. With efficiency rates up to 99 percent in eConversion mode and 97.5 percent in double conversion mode, the Galaxy VXL significantly reduces power usage and emissions. Additionally, with EcoCare’s exclusive support and faster response, intelligent remote monitoring, AI-powered analytics, and proactive maintenance insights enable operators to manage their systems more efficiently and address potential issues before they impact performance.
Support increased data demand with the Galaxy VXL
Choosing the right UPS is an important part of the strategy to adapt to growing data center market demands for uptime, efficiency, and TCO goals.
Learn more about the Galaxy VXL UPS and how it might benefit your data center.
