The units I have are scalable, to a point.  When putting in large units you spec for what the target capacity is.  In the end one may delay some charging modules but all the core infrastructure, cable, footprint, etc, must be in place day one.  If I'm buying one of these big 9395 units, I'm buying half-a-megawatt plus.  Eaton makes a lot of scalable units. They make the 93PM and the 9395 now has some great options for scalability.

The problem with scalability is, while they all do it, you're going to pay for it. If I'm going to go into an environment where I don't know what my load is going to, I don't want to buy two-and-a-half meg on day-one because I don't need it. But you've got to build everything for that on day-one: all the cables, the battery plans, the breakers; the frame has to be there.

If you're willing to spend that, then great. Most of the time, even in today's environments, it's the little ones that are scalable. You can start out with 25 Kw and go to 150. But if I want to start out at half-a-meg, and I'm going to scale to two meg, that's a different animal. I can do that with both of them. If I'm willing to pay for it, they have options. 

Do I think Eaton has scalable products? Yes, I do. And they met the needs that I have had in the past. Do I see value in scalability? I have yet to realize in my environments.

The scalability is great. You usually just swap in another power module. If we put in a 50 kVA unit and we want to upsize, or the customer wants to upsize, typically we can either just throw in one more power module to bring them up to double, or we just add another power module cabinet and then we add more capacity.

The scalability is good. One of the issues that you always run into with these systems is they have to be scalable because the last thing you want to do is buy all this infrastructure then need a little more capacity, because then you have to forklift out what you have and put in the new. That doesn't work. Therefore, scalability is really important and this system allows us to incrementally add capacity as needed.

We have utilized the building-block nature of the solution as we have grown. We can add modules, which helps from a cost standpoint and protects the initial capital investment in the system, rather than having to completely replace the system. We can start small scale and incrementally fund additional capacity as needed rather than purchasing a system, having to pull it out, and buying a brand new one.

We use Eaton extensively. We're using it for all of our critical infrastructures. From a sizing standpoint, we use it for four buildings and two data centers.

We have about five staff personnel and a portion of their responsibilities is to maintain these systems. They have three different roles in the company:

1. Data center managers who are responsible for the uptime and service delivery of all the equipment that is connected to the UPS. They monitor the health of the system on a day-to-day basis, hour by hour. They are watching that every day, monitoring the system. 
2. Building management: Part of their health check every day, they do a physical walk-through of all of the HVAC systems. In the case of the UPS systems, they go in and just open up the doors to make sure everything is looking right. Also, that stuff doesn't sound funny.  
3. We have electrical staff onboard and onsite. If there are electrical issues, they will come in and address those.

They scale well. We use the 750 interval. 

I do have considerable information for the smaller modular systems which are great systems. I haven't found an application for them, but when I do I would love to have the opportunity to implement one. That's a valuable aspect, where you can actually do plug-and-play. You could expand a UPS system without taking down your primary load.

It grows with our needs. Almost all of the systems that we looked at had pretty robust scalability, and Eaton's sales staff were always very forward-thinking when recommending the replacement units.

We plan to increase usage of Eaton UPS's. We have two more large batteries that need to be replaced in the city. We will be working on one of them this fall, and the other in the spring.

Scalability has been pretty good. We were able to increase the battery. We only installed one battery cabinet, then we added a second one for additional capacity later on. That was a nice feature that others haven't been able to do.

As of right now, we don't plans to purchase additional UPSs. However, that can change in the company depending on many factors. We have a Centralized UPS in all of our buildings.

I have not had to scale them yet. It looks like it's pretty easy. It's just another module at your plugs. I haven't utilized the building-block nature of the solution yet.

Its ability to be upgraded online without bringing your production environment down would be great if I had to use that feature, but I have not. Any time I can do anything online, that's the better way of doing it.

In terms of upgrading, we don't have a set plan right now. I'm not saying we won't, but right now there's no plan.

One of the more important aspects of these things is that they are scalable. Once you buy the pack, this thing is a 60kW UPS and they come in 12kW modules. You can start out with 12kW and get the whole installation done, and then it's just adding what you need in 12kW increments. So the cost to get into them is low and the scalability is there. The ability to expand 12kW modules is good.

Our original install was a full rack. The second one we installed was two modules. And then, about midlife, we maxed that one out with power. For the last one we did, we installed the full rack. But we're a nonprofit, so budgets can be a fluid thing from year to year. Something like this, where you can scale as needed, takes some of the burden off of people like us.

I think they're coming out with a lithium-ion battery option, which is going to decrease the heat load. For me, that's not going to be applicable to replace these things. I don't plan on replacing them for the next five to seven years.

My rule of thumb for all my UPS's is that I only load them to 50 percent because I want a redundant system to be able to handle that load. If I load one of them up to 80% and it fails, then another UPS has to make up for that 80 percent. If it's at 50 percent capacity, that puts it over. It's all in how you're running your data center.

The scalability is comparable. You can go very small or very big, so it's very good.

The scalability is good. With the 9395s you can buy extra pieces that connect up to the UPS which will expand the capacity of the UPS. Then you have to buy extra batteries. But you can scale it from 250 all the way up to 1.1 megawatts.

It is scalable. You can purchase units with a larger battery supply, which will give you more downtime. You can coordinate that and figure out how much battery time you need based on your risk level and the configuration of your generators.

Some of the models are much more scalable. Our module has an option where I can add a module to it, so it is pretty flexible.

We currently have two Eaton UPSs on two different floors. One is a Powerware product, then Eaton purchased Powerware. We don't have any plans to purchase another right now, as there isn't a need.