NEW ULM — Brown County commissioners unanimously approved the purchase of a new uninterruptible power supply for the 911 dispatch center Tuesday.

Brown County Information Technology Director Nathan Beran said the unit in place today dates back to 2009 and is well beyond its useful lifespan, plus there are questions about how long it would maintain power in an outage.

“A recent generator test and server room uninterruptible power supply (UPS) failure revealed that old UPS equipment in the server room is also a factor for dispatch in a power event,” he said. “Even if dispatch computers continue to run, dispatchers cannot access the network or state resources if server room equipment stops running.”

Beran said the most economical choice to solve both issues at the same time was to combine UPS services into a single, redundant, high-availability unit in the server room by condensing 4 UPS units into 1, eliminating some of the oldest and most important units.

He said the UPS unit costs $38,735. Electrical work moving existing wiring from the basement to a server room sub-panel was estimated at $8,165 by Full Service Electric.

Beran said the new UPS requires a 100-amp circuit to supply power that would have to be hardwired by an electrician.

The project will use one-time 911 grant funds to cover the total cost.

“I appreciate you using 911 grant funds to pay costs,” said Commissioner Scott Windschitl.

Beran said the estimated lifespan of the new equipment is about eight years.

Commissioner Brian Braun asked Beran is other installation quotes were received.

“Full Service Electric knows our facility the best,” said Beran.

Approval came on a motion by Commissioner Braun, seconded by Windschitl.