The principles of 3-Phase power are not always well understood by the installer, whose only task is to power up the equipment being installed in the computer rack. Load balancing (matching current draw on each phase) is critical in these applications for multiple reasons:
- If the three phases are not balanced, heat is generated resulting in higher cooling costs.
- Unbalanced loads lead to inefficiency and higher power bills.
- High loads on a single phase means greater chance of tripping either a PDU or upstream breaker, and losing power at the rack.