The Raritan Blog

PDU Circuit Breakers and Branch Circuits: Why Monitor Both?

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Henry Hsu

Many data centers rely on a building management system (BMS) to monitor the power being fed to their cabinets at the panelboard or branch circuit level.  On the surface, it would appear that monitoring the branch circuit at the floor panelboard is enough to avoid tripped circuits and to identify available power capacity.  But a closer look will reveal why it’s a better idea to monitor power at both the branch circuit level and the rack PDU circuit breaker level.