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When we look at the Internet of Things as it relates to industrial environments we are, in most cases, making use of the same types of devices and controllers – the “things” – that have existed for years. What is changing is the way we are connecting to these “things” and the amount of data and intelligence we are extracting from them. As we truly begin to leverage the Industrial IoT (IIoT), that data becomes more and more critical to productivity and competitiveness. This means we need to ensure it is protected from a power delivery perspective.

It is rarely practical to provide complete backup power – meaning a UPS – for an entire process or operation in an IIoT environment. What is reasonable, however, is to provide backup power for the elements – the “things” as well as the network that connects to the “things” – that are responsible for collecting the intelligence that gives the IIoT its value. That job is not as difficult as you might think.

In an industrial environment, you generally have main power to the various machines and systems as well as segregated feeds for control power. That segregated feed delivers power for controllers (PLCs, DCS systems and such), networks, sensors and other input devices. The intent is to keep that power available if you ever lose or need to shut down the main power.

This dual power system is intended to enable control power to remain in place when the main power is disconnected, in order to provide more orderly shut-down and efficient system restarts. In a modern IIoT environment that control power path provides for the additional benefits of continuous access to data from web-enabled devices. It is often during events where the upstream main power is disabled – whether intentionally or not – that this data is most important.

With respect to the IIoT, it is that control network and associated intelligent data gathering elements that we are really concerned about protecting. The good news is that this constitutes a much lower level of power compared to the main process power, which makes protecting it with UPS systems far more feasible and worthwhile from a return on investment perspective.

Ensuring you back up the most critical elements in the IIoT environment requires examining the control power distribution scheme. In some cases, the control power can only be segregated at a local element of the process, such as in a control panel. In such a case, size a single small UPS t...