New GE White Paper Makes the Case for Upgrading Legacy Power Systems at Telecommunications Central Offices

DALLAS, TX--(Marketwired - Sep 15, 2014) - As today's telecommunications central office operations cope with increasing demand for wireless and 4G bandwidth, engineers face the difficult and costly decision to maintain, upgrade or replace their existing DC power plant systems. A new white paper from GE's Critical Power business (NYSE: GE) provides migration strategies and a total cost of ownership model that help guide telecom central offices in improving their power operations.

"It's not uncommon for telecommunications central office operations to have decades-old low-efficiency, ferro-resonant rectifiers providing power conversion and back up for their critical operations," according to white paper author Vito Savino, product line leader, DC power systems, GE's Critical Power business. "If you were managing an e-commerce, banking or any other mission-critical information technology operation, would you bet the business on a 15-year-old power system?"

The new white paper, Upgrading Legacy Power Systems at Telecommunications Central Offices, examines how ferro-resonant rectifiers, the power supply mainstay for telecommunication central office operations for decades, are slowly and silently declining in performance and energy efficiency. While the majority of these rectifiers still perform their primary function of converting an electric utility's AC power into DC power for telecommunication switching equipment, many critical components such as capacitors are approaching their maximum service level of 70,000 hours or about eight years. In many cases, ongoing maintenance costs and lower energy efficiency levels impacting operating budgets create tough maintain, upgrade or replace decisions for facility managers.

GE's white paper examines the following topics.

• How aging rectifiers put additional strain on a facility's energy efficiency and overall operating expense (OpEx) budgets. 
• Why the degradation of many of these rectifiers presents a threat to the redundancy and power assurance they were designed to provide. 
• The tradeoffs telecommunications power engineers face in retaining and maintaining a legacy system compared with a full overhaul and transition to new equipment. 
• Approaches for a phased-in, upgrade strategy and deployment of next-generation switch mode rectifiers, which provide new energy efficiency levels reaching 96 to 97 percent compared with legacy systems with efficiencies in the 80 to 85 percent range.
• Total cost of ownership models comparing short-term capital expenses over long-term OpEx performance savings. 

A copy of the white paper is available online.

GE's Critical Power business provides mission-critical applications with end-to-end power product and service solutions that help maximize uptime and power efficiency. The solutions add to GE's broader Industrial Solutions portfolio of leading technologies designed for the delivery, management and optimization of electrical power for customers across multiple industries. To learn more about GE's Critical Power business visit: www.gecriticalpower.com

About GE

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