Following a number of lead-poisoning scandals in China, the government has acted decisively by ordering factories to suspend production of lead-acid batteries with no timetable to resume operations. As China is the world’s largest battery exporter, how will this affect data managers? Tom Sperrey reports.

Under current manufacturing conditions in China, 32% of the lead used in the lead-acid battery manufacturing process is allowed to be lost to the environment. This is in stark contrast to the US, where the figure is less than 1%. It should therefore be no surprise that battery production is having a negative effect on the environment, and on the people living close to the factories.

According to state media, over 4,000 people have suffered from lead poisoning since 2009. Most recently over 300 people, including 99 children, were poisoned by one factory in Zhejiang. Since the scandal came to light, this province alone has witnessed 250 factory closures and lost 90% of its battery production.

Since March 2011, therefore, China has shut down more than 70% of its 2,000 lead-acid battery factories, so data centre managers may well be asking themselves whether the resulting global shortage will really affect them. To answer that, it’s worth considering the bigger picture – the role of batteries in providing standby power for the data centre. Some recent real-life examples of the consequences of battery failure in data centres also serve to illustrate the seriousness of the situation.

Data centre power needs

According to the 2011 DataCentreDynamics Industry Census, the UK has 7.59 million square meters of dedicated data centre space consuming 6.44GW of power – enough electricity to run six million homes.

Each data centre represents a significant power burden in its own right. The total power requirement of a typical data centre includes lighting, air conditioning and the extra IT equipment to provide redundancy, as well as electricity to operate the core network and communications equipment, desktops and servers. Increasingly, data centres will require even more power for security systems such as access control, CCTV surveillance and fire alarms.

A data centre’s standby power system will always include an online UPS, often a modular system, with separate power and battery modules for greater reliability. Redundancy will typically be built in to enable planned maintenance to take place without having to power down the whole room.

Data centre equipment can be severely damaged if the power fails even for a fraction of a second. An unstable power supply (one that is subject to surges and sags) can also cause problems. An online UPS can protect against both power failure and power instability, but it needs a source of stored energy to balance out disturbances and assure a clean supply to the load, and to provide power bridging i.e. assuring consistent power when switching from grid power to generator power. For power bridging, the stored energy may be required for a matter of a few seconds (for example, while a generator starts up), or even several hours.

Today, batteries are the technology chosen by most data centre managers to store the energy that will give power continuity for the data centre, so that the equipment doesn’t miss a beat. The storage capacity of the battery bank must be sufficient to meet the power bridging demands of the system.

Battery failure consequences

Many data centres host operations on behalf of major businesses, particularly within the finance and telecoms sectors. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses are becoming increasingly dependent on hosted services for their basic IT and telephony needs. When data centres experience a power outage, it frequently has disastrous consequences for the operator’s customers – and their customers too.

Unfortunately, high-profile data centre failures tend to make the headlines. A standby power system is only as good as its weakest link, as the following examples show:

Telecity’s data centres experienced a severe power failure because its UPS had exhausted its backup batteries, bringing down its servers and damaging much of its customers’ equipment.

The servers went down in Tata’s London-based data centre when the standby power system failed during a power outage. The visiting engineer discovered that poor system maintenance had left the batteries flat, and three generators unable to start.

So it’s not enough to simply install a standby power system. Data centre managers need to ensure that it is maintained and serviced on a regular basis. The UPS must be able to support the load, the generator must be able to provide sufficient backup power, and the batteries must remain at full capacity to provide the bridging power that will ensure business continuity in the event of a mains failure.

The state of the market

According to Wang Jingzhong, vice director of the China Battery Industry Association, the Chinese battery industry has grown by 20% each year for the last six years. Moreover, Hu Yongda, an analyst at Antaike, forecast 2011 consumption at 4.19 million tonnes – up from 3.7 million tonnes the previous year.

However, by June, three months after the first factory closure, Barclays reported that lead inventories had dropped by nearly 4% and that in the second half of 2011, factory closures will push the global lead market into an 82,000 million tonne deficit. Furthermore, MF Global analyst, Edward Meir, believes that lead prices will hit $3,000 per tonne in 2012.

The factories in China will remain closed until manufacturing conditions improve and Government representatives can fully assess each factory. Zeng Jian-jun, vice general secretary of the China Lead-Acid Battery Association, predicts that within three months, China’s battery factories will be reduced to 400 sites, which could theoretically result in a fall in production of 75%.

The consensus from battery suppliers is that UK battery prices will increase by 25% and that lead times will increase by up to seven months for larger batteries – those suitable for data centres. Doing nothing should not be an option:

Data centre managers should perform a health check on their batteries now to ensure they are in good working order. This will help to identify any potential problems and enable them to plan ahead for the replacement of any sudden failures, as well as scheduling planned replacements.

Put in a system to continuously monitor battery state. By measuring some of the vital signs, data centre managers will be better able to predict battery failures and take action earlier. Remote monitoring equipment makes this approach easy and affordable today.

Over the medium term, data centre managers may want to review their energy storage options. Storage capacitors, flywheels and fuel cells are viable alternatives for power bridging applications. These alternatives will become increasingly attractive if the shortage of lead-acid batteries continues.

And finally…

Power failure can be disastrous for many organisations, but the problem is magnified for data centres because of the knock-on effect for their customers and their customers’ customers. Data centre managers should use the opportunity created by the current worldwide battery shortage to make their standby power systems even more robust.