For the third consecutive year, the ER Excellence Awards 2020 is proud to be partnered with Riello UPS. A company that never stops, we find out a bit about what Riello has been up to of late, gleaning an insight into some of its latest projects, as well as finding out why this industry leader has gone for the partnership hat trick.

Riello UPS Ltd is a global leader in the manufacture of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and standby power systems from 400VA to 6.4MVA.

Riello enables reliable power for a sustainable world by offering products that combine engineering excellence and quality performance with exceptional energy efficiency. 

The company’s award-winning range incorporates 22 solutions powering the smallest desktop PCs through to the latest data centre supercomputers. Riello UPS products protect power for high-profile businesses leading sectors as diverse as manufacturing, finance, retail, healthcare, and telecommunications.

Riello UPS is part of the Riello Elettronica Group, which has subsidiaries in 80 countries and is the second-largest UPS manufacturer in Europe. This market share is driven by its ongoing commitment to reliability, innovation, and customer service.

As well as high-quality products, Riello offers a complete range of installation, servicing, and maintenance support, plus unrivalled sales and technical advice. Riello’s maintenance contracts include guaranteed emergency response and fix times, whilst offering a five-year warranty as standard on all UPSs up to and including 3kVA.

Operating from purpose-built premises comprising office and training facilities, plus a warehouse filled with the UK’s largest stockholding of UPS, Riello is able to deliver an end-to-end service of technical support and super-fast dispatch.

As part of the Riello Elettronica Group, Riello UPS is an official sponsor of the Ducati Corse MotoGP and Aruba.it Racing World Superbike Championship motorcycle racing teams, as well as an official partner of the Audi Sport Abt Schaeffler team competing in the FIA Formula E Championship for electric cars. Not forgetting, of course (most importantly), it is a principal partner to the ER Excellence Awards.

Looking to the future

The ongoing shift in the country’s energy mix towards low carbon power is shaping the demands of Riello customers and also influencing many of the projects it’s currently getting involved with.

Today, energy efficiency is almost as high a priority as resilience and availability as far as the company’s customers are concerned. 

One area where Riello UPS is aiming to live up to those competing demands is its work with leading energy company RWE Supply & Trading. 

This project sees a specially-modified UPS fitted with a rectifier that enables a two-way flow of electricity to and from the grid network. The UPS is backed by premium batteries and sophisticated monitoring and comms software that interact with the grid in real-time.

Data centres and other energy-intensive, mission-critical organisations are able to harness the power in their UPS’s batteries to participate in demand-side response schemes that help to balance the UK electricity grid. 

Not only does this reduce a business’s reliance on peak-time mains supply – cutting electricity bills and expensive grid tariffs too – it opens up additional revenue opportunities from selling surplus power back into the network. 

And most importantly, the reliability of the UPS batteries isn’t compromised. This perception has been the biggest stumbling block to data centres, in particular, taking part in DSR. 

But the continuous battery monitoring means operators can be far more certain their cells will work when required than the sealed lead-acid blocks traditionally used with a UPS. 

Another interesting concept Riello has worked on recently is its in-depth publication the Blackout report. This started out as a bit of a throwaway line in the Riello office, ‘could there ever be a power cut affecting the whole country?’ 

From that initial question, Riello went away and researched documents such as official risk registers and even Acts of Parliament to see what contingency plans were in place. 

The final 50+ page publication explores the likelihood of a UK-wide electricity failure, what the biggest threats to the network are, the process of restarting the grid from scratch, and what the consequences would be for not just business, but wider society too.

While the major power cut of Friday August 9 was limited to around one million customers, and was resolved relatively quickly, the widespread impact and the subsequent debate it provoked about National Grid’s contingency plans raised many of the issues highlighted in the report.

In addition, it’s been an especially busy few months of product updates. The most recent of these being Riello’s latest UPS system, the Sentryum.

This is the company’s third-generation of transformerless uninterruptible power supplies, building on Riello’s best-selling Multi Sentry range. 

It comes in three different power ranges (10, 15, or 20 kVA) and a choice of three cabinet sizes (Compact, Active, and Xtend) that will give customers fantastic flexibility through the option to install more battery strings for longer runtimes.

The main event

So, why is Riello partnering with the ER Awards for the third consecutive year? Leo Craig, general manager of Riello UPS commented, “This will be the third year running where we’re the principle partners of the Electrical Review Excellence Awards. During that time, it has fast become the must-attend event of the year for the electrical industry and an undoubted highlight in our calendar. 

“As a business, we’re always striving for excellence, whether that’s in product design, delivery, or especially in customer service. Quality, integrity, sustainability, and service – those are the values we take pride in and they’re exactly the same principles these awards celebrate. There are lessons to learn from all shortlisted finalists across each of the diverse categories. 

“The event provides a fantastic opportunity to catch up with friendly faces, old and new. But more importantly, it allows the industry to honour the ideas, innovations, and achievements that make the electrical sector such an exciting and rewarding one to work in.”

“The introduction of new data centre categories in this year’s awards really added a new dimension to proceedings and we’re really excited to see what entries are put forward in that category, and all the regular favourites, next year.”