Power systems supplier CUI Inc. says it has deployed initial test units of its Intelligent Control of Energy (“ICE”) Block technology at three data center market participants.

One, a data center and a Fortune 500 company, has its own data center infrastructure in multiple states serving millions of consumer transactions and financial product portfolios across North America. This company sees the peak shaving capabilities as an opportunity to install additional racks in its existing data centers and new data centers under construction.

The second company is a top-tier data center hardware provider and is evaluating the technology for peak shaving and using the switch as a platform to improve its customer value proposition.

The third firm, a Fortune 100 company, is one of the largest providers of technology in the world, a backbone for all data centers, and is evaluating the ICE Block/VPS combination of technologies as a platform it will include in the solutions provided to its customer base. The products are expected to move into full production status later this year.

The ICE system employs peak shaving principles to free-up redundant supply capacity. It profiles power demand and employs battery storage to manage peak demand using power stored during low utilization periods. It allocates power to racks, branch circuits and IT nodes, with constant awareness of power consumption needs across the data center topology. Power can be intelligently distributed across racks depending upon need and historical usage patterns. The system can also recover lost power and improve the efficiency of the power infrastructure. And the system can apply backup generators and secondary sources as amplifiers of power capacity and not as fail-overs.

Manufactured by CUI, the ICE-compatible power supply system offers a plug and play way to bring the benefits of elastic power to data centers. Designed as modular rack mountable shelves, CUI’s innovative design enables racks to take advantage of the ICE Software Stack.

Shankar Ramamurthy, Virtual Power Systems chief executive officer, commented, “We cannot be more excited with our partner, CUI, who combines engineering gravitas with high-speed innovation. VPS recently piloted ICE Blocks from CUI at one of the world’s most sophisticated data centers in Salt Lake City. CUI’s products performed flawlessly. CUI was able to take complex high-density lithium ion battery chemistry designs and turn them into working products at customer shelves in record time.”