Why the higher quote was the cheaper system
Burn-in and environmental stress screening
A customer came to Intepro with a burn-in requirement above 600 kW at 800 VDC. Intepro's quote was roughly $160,000 higher than a competitor's, and the customer bought it anyway. The reasoning is worth spelling out, because it is the argument for auto-ranging in one concrete purchase.
The two quotes
Intepro proposed 23 units at 30 kW / 1000 V. The competing product met the requirement of the initial programme perfectly well and cost around $160,000 less.
The question the customer asked was not which one met the specification. Both did. The question was what each one is worth after the programme ends.
- Requirement
- > 600 kW at 800 VDC
- Intepro package
- 23 × 30 kW / 1000 V
- Price difference
- approx. $160,000 higher
What auto-ranging buys after the programme
Intepro's DC products provide full rated power down to one third of the voltage range. Once the burn-in programme finished, those units could be redeployed to any 30 kW application needing 350–1000 VDC.
The competing units delivered full rated power only at maximum voltage. Repurposing them meant finding another programme with near-identical requirements — which, as the original page put it, does not happen too often. The cheaper system was cheaper once; the auto-ranging system keeps being useful.
- Full power down to
- 1/3 of voltage range
- Redeployable across
- 350–1000 VDC at 30 kW
And the energy
Intepro's energy calculations, run on moderate usage estimates, showed a significant saving against the competing configuration. On those estimates the price gap was recovered by energy savings within the first year of the programme.
That is the whole case: a higher quote that is repurposable and cheaper to run is not a higher quote.
What it shows
Acquisition price and programme cost are different numbers. On long burn-in and ESS programmes the second one dominates, and auto-ranging is what decides whether the hardware has a life after the programme that bought it.