With several of its schools located in remote areas where lengthy outages can be common, the district needed a UPS solution capable of powering its most critical network systems for several hours. “Power quality can vary dramatically among our school sites, based on the area they’re in,” explains Jason Lester, the district’s supervisor of technology. “Some sites experience a lot more issues than others, especially those in more remote locations.”

Noting that nearby trees often cause problems, Lester emphasizes that safety is always the top priority for the district. Because its VoIP networks are essential for maintaining communication—especially during an emergency situation—the phone systems cannot be left vulnerable to any inconsistencies that may impact the utility supply. “For our schools in remote areas, if there’s a power outage, they could lose Internet and phone service, and even cell signals may not be reliable,” he explains.

In addition to safeguarding communication systems during outages, Washington County also desired a way to remotely monitor all of its UPSs from a central location. Furthermore, to help streamline its refresh process, the district needed a way to keep track of the details of every UPS within its installed base ― from the location of each asset to its deployment date.

When considering UPS models, Washington County was also challenged by space constraints in many of its older buildings, some of which were constructed more than 90 years ago. “These sites were never built with equipment rooms,” Lester acknowledges, “so we often have to squeeze in equipment wherever we can.”

After experiencing numerous reliability issues with other UPS brands ― most notably, with batteries ― in 2018, the Washington County School System made the decision to standardize on Eaton.

Initially deploying approximately 100 Eaton 5S, 5P and 5PX UPS models across all of its school sites, the district was so impressed with the reliability of the units that it made the decision to refresh the entire fleet in 2024. “We’ve tried other manufacturers in the past, but always had various issues,” Lester explains. “We try to replace our units around the four-year mark. But when we went through the refresh, most of the Eaton UPSs were already five or six years old and yet still completely operational. We are getting great lifespan from Eaton.”

To minimize downtime, the district swapped out the UPSs in several intervals over breaks and on snow days, completing the process during the summer. The majority of units consist of 5P and 5PX models, with Washington County typically supporting each of its MDFs and VoIP applications with a 5PX 3000 and two or three extended battery modules (EBMs) ― enough to keep phone systems operational for up four hours. A handful of 5S units are installed in the most space-constrained spots, such as football stadium press boxes. “We appreciate that all of the 5PX models can be used as rack or towers,” Lester says. “How we deploy them varies, depending on the space we have to work with.”  

Washington County has been especially impressed with the reliability and lifespan of the UPS batteries. “One of the biggest things for us is Eaton’s battery charging technology,” Lester emphasizes, noting that prior to standardizing on Eaton, the district endured multiple cases where other manufacturers’ batteries exploded, expanded within UPSs or failed prematurely for unknown reasons. “They were always dying unexpectedly,” he says.

All of that has changed, thanks to Eaton’s patented ABM technology, a three-stage battery charging technique that not only increases battery service life by 50 percent, but also optimizes recharge time and provides up to a 60-day advanced notification when batteries are approaching the end of their useful life. Eaton is the only UPS manufacturer with the capability to increase battery life by 50%.

Washington County included a Gigabit Network Card with almost every UPS, enabling enhanced management and cybersecurity capabilities. And as the district refreshed its UPS fleet, it opted to also deploy Eaton’s Distributed IT Performance Management (DITPM) software, which is part of the company’s Brightlayer Data Centers suite, a portfolio of digital solutions for data center and distributed IT environments. Brightlayer affords full system visibility and the ability to efficiently manage IT and operational technology (OT) assets in a single, native application, with DITPM providing deep intelligence into network-connected assets, such as PDUs and UPSs, located across multiple sites.

“We wanted better monitoring features and notifications, as well as the ability to keep track of our models and runtimes, especially for UPSs protecting our critical equipment and applications,” Lester explains.

DITPM has been a game-changer for the Washington County School System, allowing the district to centrally track asset lifecycle for IT and OT assets; reduce operational costs with real-time data and automated alerts; and view real-time and historical data regardless of device vendor, vintage or protocol. When an issue arises at any school site, the software sends automated, customized alerts via text message, email reports and/or system notifications to Lester and his team.

The remote troubleshooting capabilities have been especially beneficial, Lester notes, adding that most of the district’s IT functions are centralized in a main office, with a teacher or librarian usually assigned to help with day-to-day IT issues at each school site. “Before DITPM, we would only know if our network was down,” Lester explains. “We’d have no idea what the issue was. Now we get notifications, and we can see if there is a power problem or if it’s something else. Considering that some schools are 30 miles from our office, it is a tremendous time-saver not having to send IT personnel out to the site.”

The ability to program a sequential shutdown of equipment during an outage has also been instrumental for the district. “We’ve been able to automate the system, so it determines when the UPS battery is down to 20 percent capacity and then gracefully powers down the servers.”

DITPM has also been vital in helping Washington County simplify the management of its large UPS fleet, making it easy for IT administrators to keep track of where units are located, the date when they were deployed and other pertinent data. “It’s great having one central spot where we can log in and see every UPS in the district, the model number, the battery capacity, etc.,” Lester says, adding that the software also makes it easy to add custom fields, such as the number of EBMs attached to each UPS. “This is very handy for inventory purposes, so when we do our next refresh, we don’t have to go around and manually count each one,” he points out.

Furthermore, because DITPM is part of a scalable platform for managing, monitoring and controlling IT and OT assets at distributed sites, campuses and data centers, it provides an easy upgrade path with the ability to add more functionality over time. All that’s required is a simple license key update—no migrating data, or having to change or integrate multiple software platforms.

For the Washington County School District, the real test always comes when a blackout strikes. Last week, for instance, the Eaton solution earned an A+ when an extended power outage struck while students were in the process of statewide testing. “Everything worked exactly like it was supposed to,” Lester confirms. “Students were completing the testing on Chromebooks and the UPSs kept the network up, so they were able to finish their tests, even though power was out at the schools.”

This peace of mind is something that Lester did not experience with past UPS manufacturers. “I feel so much more comfortable knowing that if we do have a power outage, we’ll be able to keep our network and phones up for an extended period of time,” he says.