The rotary actuators are an off-the-shelf item for transfer switches. No
problem to get them paired with high-amperage switches. But a contactor, which
is a solenoid-driven switch, is also an off-the-shelf item. The ones I use in
EV applications are rated for 1000A, and cost about $300. You need to be
careful to look at the trade-off between voltage, amperage, and the per-cycle
probability of a weld, though. An over-rated contactor helps a lot if you're
going to be cycling it a lot, whereas if it's for emergency use only, you can
hew a lot closer to the max rating.
-Bill
> On Jan 28, 2015, at 18:40, Robert Drake <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> For larger DC devices with ~50amps per side, does anyone have a software
> accessible way to turn off power?
>
> I've looked into PDU's but the ones I find have a max of 10amps.
>
> I've considered building something with solenoids or a rotary actuator that
> would turn the switches on or off, but that's a complete one-off and would
> need to be done for each device we manage (not to mention it involves janky
> wiring all over the place I've got to explain to the colo)
>
> My use case is pretty infrequent so it needs to be remote-hands cheap.. it's
> for emergencies when you need to completely power cycle a redundantly powered
> DC device. The last time I needed this it was because a router was stuck in
> a boot loop due to a bad IOS upgrade and wouldn't break to rommon since it
> had been >60 seconds. It came up again tonight because we wanted to disable
> one power supply to troubleshoot something.
>
> FWIW, I believe I've seen newer Cisco gear with high-end power supplies that
> have a console or ethernet port which would possibly let you shut them down
> remotely. That solves the problem nicely if you're dealing with only one bit
> of hardware, but I'd like a general solution that worked with any vendor.
> Possibly a fuse panel with solenoids that could add/remove fuses when
> needed.. or would that be considered dangerous in code-ways or in telco fire
> regulation ways?
>
>
>
>
