Redundant power supply

With Pro RM, Wei­d­müller presents three new redun­dan­cy mod­ules for decou­pling the out­puts of par­al­lel switched-mode pow­er sup­plies. The par­al­lel switch­ing enables a redun­dant pow­er sup­ply con­cept, result­ing in the high­est equip­ment avail­abil­i­ty. Devices from the Pro RM series are char­ac­terised by high per­for­mance in a very small space; their effi­cien­cy ratio is over 90%. They can be deployed around the world thanks to inter­na­tion­al approvals.
The switched-mode pow­er sup­plies are ide­al for sup­ply­ing the pow­er for con­trols and oth­er com­pa­ra­ble devices found in pan­els. With their effi­cien­cy ratio of over 90% and a long ser­vice life, they save on ener­gy and on costs. High qual­i­ty devices for indus­tri­al and data cen­tre appli­ca­tions, offer MTBF (Mean Time Between Fail­ure) times of > 500,000 hours and long ser­vice lives. The build­ing-in of redun­dan­cies can sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase equip­ment avail­abil­i­ty for par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal sys­tems, such as auto­mo­tive indus­try pro­duc­tion lines or process­es in the chem­i­cal, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and process indus­tries. In such cas­es, sev­er­al pow­er sup­plies are switched in par­al­lel in order to guar­an­tee oper­a­tion even if one pow­er sup­ply drops out.
Switched-mode pow­er sup­plies exhib­it an issue inher­ent in the sys­tem though: when mul­ti­ple sec­ondary cir­cuits are switched direct­ly in par­al­lel, an oppo­site neg­a­tive influ­ence can affect the indi­vid­ual cir­cuit, which in a worst-case sce­nario can lead to the destruc­tion of the devices. This how­ev­er can be very eas­i­ly and reli­ably pre­vent­ed with redun­dan­cy mod­ules (work like diode mod­ules). They are posi­tioned between the pow­er sup­ply out­puts and the equip­ment that is to be sup­plied with pow­er. This decou­ples the pow­er sup­plies, and a short-cir­cuit has no effect on the load any more. In addi­tion, they offer pro­tec­tion against ener­gy recov­ery. These mod­ules are equal­ly well suit­able for redun­dant oper­a­tions in the sup­ply of crit­i­cal com­po­nents as for dou­bling the pow­er increase.
The com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly show­cas­ing three new redun­dan­cy mod­ules: the Pro RM 10 for input cur­rents of up to 2 x 12 A and a per­ma­nent out­put cur­rent of 24 A, the Pro RM 20 with up to 2 x 24 A (in) and 48 A (out) and the Pro RM 40 with up to 2 x 48 A (in) and 96 A (out). The input volt­age can be between 10 and 32 V DC. Devices from the Pro RM series are char­ac­terised by high per­for­mance in a very small space; their effi­cien­cy ratio is over 98%. They can be hor­i­zon­tal­ly mount­ed, side-by-side on the ter­mi­nal rail, with­out any gap between them. A gap of 50mm above and below to allow for the flow of air is enough. Thanks to an LED dis­play and sta­tus relay, they offer per­ma­nent sta­tus mon­i­tor­ing and rapid state diag­nos­tics. This facil­i­tates main­te­nance and ensures reli­able oper­a­tion. The Pro RM have many inter­na­tion­al approval cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, e.g. cULus, Class I, Div. 2 and Atex. This makes them ide­al for many dif­fer­ent automa­tion applications.