Hospitals are a place where energy consumption is very high and in a critical context such as the operating room, operational continuity is of vital importance as a power outage could lead to very serious consequences for well-being and health. of patients.
For this reason, Medical Uninterruptible Power Supplies are essential devices to avoid blackouts and voltage surges in healthcare facilities and AEC’s medical UPS ensure high levels of safety and reliability even in the most critical contexts and comply with current regulations in the healthcare sector. .
Hospitals are one of the most complex and delicate types of buildings, operating 24 hours a day with requirements that meet the highest standards in terms of safety, environmental quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the services provided to users. The ability to withstand a power failure is very low. In hospitals and medical facilities, a simple power outage can turn into a huge problem.
It can really affect the machines used to keep patients alive or the machines that surgeons normally use in the operating room. In any case, any event involving a hospital’s failure to provide services carries huge healthcare costs.
In general, the energy distribution network in a hospital can be distinguished between:
- normal (not essential)
- critical (essential).
The rule that governs the electrical systems of plants used for medical use requires the electricity supply for the security services to which the security service must intervene, in the event of a normal power failure.
Hospitals and medical facilities generally need to have:
- an electrical safety system for the loads necessary for the safety of people
- an emergency electrical system for the loads necessary for the protection of goods, objects or services and their continuity.
Hospitals and healthcare facilities must therefore equip themselves with efficient systems to cope with three fundamental and essential aspects:
– disaster recovery: a set of resources and procedures capable of restoring services after a negative event, minimizing data loss.
– availability of services: must be high.
– business continuity: is the ability of an organization to plan and respond to accidents and destruction, and to continue to operate.
Most hospitals and clinics implement generators and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) to protect themselves from disasters and blackouts. In practice, there is no single product or single procedure capable of protecting an entire structure but various levels of protection, redundant systems for the most critical areas of hospitals and various procedures, standards and rules to follow. Taking into account that healthcare facilities are characterized by an exceptionally low tolerance to power interruptions (e.g. slight voltage fluctuations) they can impact the stringent voltage requirements of the equipment and cause damage. More serious events can affect equipment that keeps patients alive and critical auxiliary systems such as:
- heating systems
- ventilation and conditioning systems
- telecommunications
- management of medical records
- safety.
Which UPS to choose for a hospital
When choosing a UPS, the factors to consider are, for example, the battery life, cost, size, manufacturer, number of outputs, manageability, etc. There are also less visible and less easily understood factors such as internal design or topology that affect UPS performance in different environments.
Before deciding on a UPS, it is important to understand the requirements of the equipment to be protected and the environment in which the UPS will be installed.
Loads that require uninterrupted or turbulent power are called “privileged loads”.
There are electromechanical devices in the hospital to maintain the patient’s life such as automatic ventilators, heart machines, artificial lungs, etc. In the event that the public power network is interrupted, resulting in poor service and sometimes death to patients, the priority loads must be powered from an emergency power source powered by static uninterruptible power supplies.
In the hospital environment, the privileged loads are powered in ordinary conditions through double conversion on-line UPS since the main parameter to be considered is the response time which, in critical applications, must be equal to 0.
UPS Benefits for Hospitals | Medical Uninterruptible Power Supply
The choice of powering the users in the medical environment with uninterruptible power supplies allows a series of advantages over other power supply solutions:
- advanced communication capabilities: the UPS provides many communication interfaces, via clean contacts, via serial or computer network, up to communication with the assistance centers via telephone or computer network.
- high reliability: the vastness of the UPS market makes it one of the products with the greatest technological content.
- minimum dimensions: the UPS today are very small
- simplicity of installation and positioning: the UPS can be installed on rooms with minimal predisposition (no need for fumes exhaust) thanks to its small size.
- maximum power quality: the UPS not only compensates for power failures but also supplies, purified from the many disturbance phenomena present on the electrical networks.
