Patent ID: 7679217

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a first power supply and a second power supply operated in parallel to provide power to a load wherein each power supply is configured to supply full power to the load in response to a failure of the other power supply and wherein each power supply comprises two or more power stages, the two or more power stages comprising a primary stage and a regulator stage, the primary stage configured to regulate voltage on an internal bus that serves as an input for the regulator stage, the regulator stage configured to regulate voltage on a regulated bus connected to the load; a power meter configured to detect an amount of power provided by the power supplies to the load and to determine if the provided power is below a predefined power threshold; a regulator control module configured to control the operation of the regulator stages of the power supplies such that the regulator stage of the first power supply is shut down in response to the provided power falling below the predefined power threshold such that only the second power supply provides power to the load and wherein the primary stage of the first power supply remains operational; and a recovery module configured to start up the regulator stage of the first power supply in response to a failure of the second power supply such that the first power supply provides power to the load.