Categories: BatteriesUPSUPS Systems

Intelligent UPS power for Healthcare

Standby Systems can offer highly advanced UPS backup power protection technology for all applications in the health care sector

The equipment used in the health care profession is highly advanced and sensitive to power quality. Whether a patient is undergoing a routine check-up or advanced medical procedure, it is essential to ensure the highest standard quality of power supply.

Poor quality power supply could result in false laboratory results and misdiagnosis. Continuity of power is essential to ensure that patient’s health records are kept accurate and up to date, printed records are available unhindered, and network and internet are operating in uptime to allow for unhindered communication between various medical sectors, etc.

For medical procedures and radiography to be performed unhindered, allowing patients to be treated on time, all the time, it is vital to secure power availability when the power fails, as it so often does nowadays due to our unreliable ESKOM electricity supply grid.

When the utility supply fails, the only way to ensure smooth continuity of the medical sector with all its highly sensitive, high-value equipment and services, is to make use of a UPS, also known as an uninterruptible power supply.

UPS systems for healthcare applications are available in many sizes, with a wide range of battery backup times that range from a few minutes, to allow the backup generator to start up, to a few hours, if a generator is not available. This enables smooth continuity of services within the healthcare sector irrelevant of the utility power status.

Although long battery backup times are possible, they are costly, require replacement every few years and take up a lot of space. The combination of a short backup battery on a UPS with standby diesel generator set is the ideal emergency power solution for any long-term power reliability.

Standby Systems has been providing the medical industry with UPS systems, batteries, and services since 2003. Many hospital groups, medical imaging companies, radiographers, and laboratories use our range of UPS systems, with the transformer-based UPS technology, which has proven itself to work well within the demanding load requirements of the medical sector, offering unsurpassed reliability, as well as lowest total cost of ownership in the long term, being preferred.

Standby Systems’ team of highly skilled and widely experienced UPS engineers and technical sales teams, along with its large service infrastructure, can provide a reliable, long term, technical solution for any medical application from IT, emergency lighting and connectivity, to highly advanced imaging power supply solutions at affordable prices.

Choosing the right UPS system for your medical application

There is a wide range of UPSs to select from for use in various sectors of the medical industry, starting with administration facility protection and moving across a broad range of uses to include emergency facilities, labs, theatres, and treatment rooms, and up to radiography and various imaging and treatment facilities.

Normally UPS systems are located in the various equipment rooms throughout a medical facility to prevent any direct contact by unauthorised personnel and keep everyone safe.

Apart from keeping medical equipment running, it is also essential to have a UPS supply for emergency lighting, firefighting and detection systems, security systems, IT, telecommunications, and administration services, which all play vital support roles.

To choose the right UPS and battery solution for the wide spectrum of healthcare load requirements, it is important to consider the following:

Load peak draw on start-up and while operating
Some loads, such as scanners and Xray machines, draw very high peak currents while scanning. They can also cause severe distortion of the UPS inverter Sinewave. Whichever UPS you select needs to be able to cater for this and not rely on bypass. This will ensure that loads can work irrespective of the power supply conditions. Such loads are best suited to work with a transformer-based inverter, which is much hardier and more reliable in such applications. The AROS Riello MPT, MHT or MHE UPS is the best choice in this case.
Load power factor across its working range needs to be considered so that the kilowatt rating of the UPS inverter is not exceeded during load operation.
Sources of electromagnetic interference need to be considered to prevent the UPS from being affected by them, compromising its inverter loads. The UPS should be positioned in a place away from such sources.

The wide range of UPS systems offered by Standby Systems allow for an affordable and flexible solution for all types of healthcare loads. The design, incorporating the latest 3-level inverter technology with the best quality components and state of the art controls, ensures the power supply is always available.

If space is a problem, the AROS Riello range of UPS systems and ELITE batteries boast some of the smallest footprints in the market. This ensures maximum space utilisation and reduces square meterage costs, hence lower total cost of ownership.

The advanced communications abilities of Standby Systems UPS units ensure that all the UPS systems installed in the healthcare environment can be monitored on a real-time basis, either centrally or individually, with active reporting and monitoring to ensure load uptime.

24/7 CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Our dedicated team of technical sales and projects divisions offer the health care sector a widely experienced and technically dedicated UPS knowledgebase. We can assist our clients with a technically unique and solid solution for each application that caters for their needs to provide high quality and reliable emergency backup power to their critical healthcare loads. These services include:

Free Site visits and UPS System design
Free UPS System sizing
Free Battery type choice
Free Battery sizing
Free Technical advice
Free Support desk via phone or email
Factory acceptance and witness testing
Swap out of small UPS systems
Onsite technical support for hard wired systems
Preventative maintenance contracts with detailed report back to the user after each visit for ongoing monitoring of your UPS system

Various parts of a hospital will make use of different technology or topology UPS units. The AROS Riello UPS range can be used as follows:

Main LV distribution substation – the AROS RIELLO CSS systems are ideal for use here in accordance with EN50171 standards.
Medical examination and small procedure rooms – The AROS Riello sentinel tower and Sentinel Dual are ideal.
Procedure wards – The AROS Riello Sentryum and Multi Sentry UPS systems are ideal for use here.
Admin centre and telephone exchange – The AROS Riello Sentryum and Multi Sentry UPS systems are ideal for use here.
Data centre, IT, and security – The AROS Riello Sentryum, Multi Sentry and transformer based MPT MHT and MHE UPS systems are ideal for use here.
Laboratories – The AROS Riello single and three phase Sentinel tower, SDSU, Sentryum and Multi Sentry UPS systems are ideal for use here.
Diagnostic equipment – The AROS Riello MPT is the ideal product to use.
Operating theatres – the AROS RIELLO CSS systems are ideal for use here in accordance with EN50171 standards.