Uninterruptible power supply

I do want to just talk about the kinds of batteries that we are discussing here.

Can we just differentiate traditional UPS batteries from the batteries outside of the data center, the much bigger batteries that we are talking about? Give folks a sense of the difference between the two.

Yeah, so batteries in battery energy storage systems, the world we live in, they look like AA batteries.

They're put in packs, and then they're put in shipping containers.

Yeah, I mean, I think you've got DC and AC and then back to DC again.

So how do you do that as efficiently as possible without losing power? And of course, there's multiple ways to do that.

I think the opportunity is to be able to take advantage of these huge shipping containers that Kelsey's talking about to provide that UPS.

It's funny, as Kelsey was describing the kind of space age liquid cooled, which is true, right? I mean, I was there too and I couldn't believe it, right? You're like, where's the sound? I'm reminded of, you know, I'm somebody that's been around data centers for, I'll just say decades without aging myself too much.

And the power doesn't just come in through, you know, a larger version of the outlet behind your desk.

At this scale, you're talking about utility transmission, major substations, high voltage transformers, medium voltage distribution throughout the campus, more transformers then closer to the equipment, switchgear, UPS systems, batteries.

It's really its own electrical ecosystem when you're talking facilities at that scale.

Yeah.

I got a little got something in the mailbag this week from listener Paul.

He says, now that you've replaced all your UPS batteries with three year batteries.

So, yeah, that was me.

I I had to replace all my all my old.

I don't know.

I don't want to go through that.

I guess some of these lithium UPSs are about what I paid for replacing all the batteries, but I wouldn't want to do this again.

Yeah, I've seen people recommend these, but honestly, the SLA batteries, the sealed lead acid batteries that Seth is talking about, most of the time when you get a UPS, if you get the user-replaceable ones, it's 12-volt 7-amp batteries, and you can usually find them for like $20 or $30 each.

The tragedy of podcasting, yeah, you can't look at your toys.

Do you have a UPS in there, and how do you handle air conditioning? Those are the two questions I deal with when it comes to VR, because VR seems to increase the temperature about 10 degrees, and if you don't have air conditioning, you're in trouble.

It's true.

We are lucky enough that we were able to install a mini split system.

Here in the office, I get a little bit of cold.

And what was the second half of your question? It was air conditioning and then...

UPS power.

Yes,

And obviously, where space is a premium in a data center, that is very valuable.

If you can save the space on the UPS side of things, you can put in more racks and servers, etc., where you actually make your money as a data center operator.

The other side of it is where in that scheme of things does battery go? And I'll come to that in a second.

The other use case, the third one, so the first one was power supply.

The second one was the UPS.

The third one, along the side of power quality, is very simplistically a GPU, i.e. the chips that are in the data centers that perform the work.

They oscillate in power demand quite rapidly.

So it's not just one application that's being implemented across multiple parts of the data center value chain.

Uh, good chance to talk about them for a minute.

There's UPSes and then there's good UPSes.

Uh, most UPSes put out a square wave, which is all right for a computer because they operate on, uh, transformers or power packs that don't mind.

But if you plug anything critical in it, what I mean critical, uh, shortwave receiver and stuff that, uh, has transformers right on their power.

Um, transformers do not like square waves.

So yeah, the, the AI power spike, very, very interesting.

So, you know, our initial entrance in this market was for UPS or backup power for data centers.

It's been around forever.

You know, the reliability for data centers is extreme, you know, we call it critical, and they've always had batteries.

We'd be heavier, we wouldn't last as long.

We're more expensive, so we'd, we'd love to do those applications, but, uh, we just have to stay in our little, in our little world here.

And when we started, it was a little bit like we had a solution looking for a problem because we knew what our battery could do, and then, you know, UPS data center was really booming, and then AI came.

So these are just our sweet spot.

The technology at the heart of the project draws on RIMAC's existing strengths.

RIMAC will contribute its battery modules, battery management systems, power conversion technology, and uninterruptible power supply units.

UPS for short, which are essentially backup power systems that keep equipment running if the main supply cuts out.

ECOBLOX brings the modular architecture itself, cooling systems, IT infrastructure, and the management software that ties everything together.

So in practical terms, REMAC is supplying the energy layer, while ECOBLOX wraps it in a ready-to-deploy data center package.