Patent ID: 8671298

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of power supplies to supply electrical energy to components of the system, each of the plurality of power supplies capable of being enabled and disabled from supplying electrical energy to the components; a management controller in communication with the plurality of power supplies and to: determine estimated power requirements of the components of the system; determine a set of configurations of the plurality of power supplies, wherein for a configuration in the set of configurations: enabled power supplies of the configuration have adequate aggregate power capacity to deliver the estimated power requirements; and switching to the configuration from a previous configuration includes: enabling no more than one previously disabled power supply; and disabling no more than one previously enabled power supply; determine a first configuration in the set of configurations having a maximum power efficiency; when the first configuration has an aggregate power efficiency greater than the previous configuration, communicate control signals to the plurality of power supplies to switch to the first configuration; and estimate an aggregate power efficiency for the first configuration based at least on power requirements and power supply efficiency data for enabled power supplies of the first configuration, wherein the aggregate power efficiency is equal to a weighted sum of individual power efficiencies of enabled power supplies of the first configuration, wherein an addend of the weighted sum is equal to a power efficiency of a first enabled power supply multiplied by a ratio of a power capacity of the first enabled power supply to the aggregate power capacity of the enabled power supplies of the first configuration, and wherein the power efficiency of the first enabled power supply is determined at a power output level satisfying the estimated power requirements.