American Journal of Applied Sciences 4 (3): 181-183, 2007

ISSN 1546-9239
© 2007 Science Publications

Monitoring System for Uninterruptible Power Supply

S.A.Z. Murad, M.N.Md. Isa and N.A. Rahman

School of Microelectronic Engineering, Northern Malaysia University College of Engineering
Kompleks Pusat Pengajian KUKUM, 02600 Jejawi, Perlis, Malaysia

Abstract: In industrial process today, reliability of equipment is very important. Power supply must be
able to cater the need of industrial process. In case of power failure, backup power supply system must
be able to support the main process plant. This is to ensure smooth operation and product quality. In
order to do this, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system can be used to ensure the reliability,
stability and consistency of the entire system. This UPS system must be monitored in order to enable
them to react accordingly in response to a fault or power failure. In this project, monitoring system for
UPS was designed by using visual basic (VB) to provide a safe and constant 12V DC supply in the
case of power disruption. The main power supply, 240V AC was converted to 12V DC as output
voltage and a battery will be used as part of the backup system. This system will be able to control the
source of power which offers power from LIVE line or power from BATTERY line. The main output
voltage was 12V DC and the battery level will be monitored using GUI software created using VB.

Key words: Backup power supply, power failure, uninterruptible power supply, UPS monitoring
system, visual basic

INTRODUCTION This study presented on-line UPS monitoring

system with visual basic. The on-line consists of a
Power back-up system is essential and has been rectifier, charger, battery and static transfer switch.
used by industries all over the world to ensure their Under normal line conditions, the load is directly
machines or equipments operation running smoothly supplied from the live line as shown in Fig. 1. After
without having the effect of power disruption. power failure, a battery continues supplying power to
Therefore, the power back-up system is very important the load. Batteries are also available charged, as
to make sure that the overall system work properly. necessary when line power is available. The monitoring
There are often cases that the power back-up system do system using Microsoft Visual Basic is designed to
not work properly when needed and this failure caused monitor the constant 12VDC supply from live line and
losses in term of time and money to industries. A
system that be able to monitor this power back-up from the battery when power failure is occurred. The
system can detect any abnormal activities occurred to prototype of on-line UPS is designed and output voltage
the system. In addition, the system can prevent any is monitored using Graphical User Interface (GUI)
fault that may affect the whole operations. software in order to monitor the overall system.
UPS systems have enabled the improvement of
power source quality, providing clean and Bypass
uninterruptible power to critical loads such as industrial line
process controls, computers, medical equipment, data
communication systems and protection against power INPUT OUTPUT
supply disturbances or interruptions[1-3]. UPS provides 240VAC
POWER BATERRY STATIC
SWITCH 12VDC
stable supply to the system in the present or absence of
the input supply[4]. It is important for the UPS system to UPS
be able to take over immediately that full load in power
outage or out-of-tolerance situation to avoid any data
loss, uncontrolled system shut-down or malfunctioning
of the device[5]. Commonly, the UPS topology can be
classified as off-line UPS, line interactive UPS and on-
line UPS. The three topologies were discussed in details Fig. 1: Block diagram of on-line UPS
in[2-6].
Corresponding Author: S.A.Z. Murad, School of Microelectronic Engineering, Northern Malaysia University
College of Engineering, Kompleks Pusat Pengajian KUKUM, 02600 Jejawi, Perlis, Malaysia,
Tel: 604-979 8432, Fax: 604-979 8305
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 Am. J. Applied Sci., 4 (3): 181-183, 2007

Design method: A simple UPS is designed by using UPS is shown in Fig. 4. The GUI for the system which
transformer, 1N4001 diodes, capacitors and 7812 IC is UPS Workbench V1.0 was created using visual basic
regulator to produce 12V DC voltage. The output
12V FROM
LIVE LINE DC/DC
T EN8-1222

ADC T O RELAY BAT T ERY LINE

AD574JN MICROCONTROLLER
AT89C51 T O RELAY LIVE LINE

ADC
AD574JN RS-232
INT ERFACE

12V FROM
DC/DC
BAT T ERY LINE
T EN8-1222 Fig. 3: On-line UPS
Fig. 2: Block diagram for monitoring system

voltage is supplied to the live line output. The 12V DC

is then connected to 7805 IC regulator to produce 5V
DC voltage. This voltage will be used by
microcontroller and others components that required 5V
DC voltage. The 5V circuit consisted of 7805 IC
regulator that regulates the 12V voltage from the main
circuit to 5V voltage level. There are also 12V DC
which is supplied from the battery as a backup.
The AT89C51 8-bit microcontroller with 4K bytes
flash is used to control the overall system. This device Fig. 4: Monitoring system for UPS prototype
is manufactured using Atmel’s high density nonvolatile
memory technology and allows the program memory to
be reprogrammed in system. The DC-to-DC converter
that maintains ± 12VDC output with the input range
between 9VDC to 18VDC is designed using
TRACOPOWER TEN8-1222. The output voltage is
then supplied to A/D converter AD574JN that operates
in unipolar operation. The AD574JN conversion
process is controlled by the microcontroller.
The microcontroller consists of Port 0, Port 1, Port
2 and Port 3. Port 0 is connected to AD574JN in orders
to control the converter and also connected to relays,
controlling the line switching. Port 1 and Port 2 is
connected to AD574JN as an input to convert data by
A-to-D converter. At Port 3, only pin 10 and pin 11
were used to transmit and received data. Furthermore, (a) (b)
the microcontroller is connected to computer by using
RS-232 interface. The RS-232 interface circuit
consisted of a MAX232 and DB9 female connector.
The relays are connected to battery line and live line to
perform as a line switching during the interrupt. The
hardware will communicate with visual basic software
to monitor and control UPS system as shown in Fig. 2.
RESULTS
The on-line UPS of the system consists of four
main components which are power supply circuit,
microcontroller circuit, relays circuit and converters
circuit as shown in Fig. 3. The components were
constructed separately so that the circuit is easy to (c)
troubleshoot. The power supply circuit is connected to
main source 240V AC to produce 12V DC voltage. Fig. 5: Output voltage monitoring results. (a) From
Then, the on-line UPS is connected to the computer to live line. (b) From attery line. (c) Power failure
monitor the overall system. The monitoring system for for both lines
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 Am. J. Applied Sci., 4 (3): 181-183, 2007

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
19.
The authors wish to express our appreciation 6. Matthew, S.R., J.D. Parham and M.H. Rashid, An
to the support and contributions from those who assist Overview of Uninterruptible Power Supplies. IEEE
in this research especially Kolej Universiti Kejuruteraan Proc., pp: 159-164.
Utara Malaysia (KUKUM) for providing the short term
research grant (9001-00034) that enabled the
production of this article.

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