Centiel’s Uninterruptible Power Supplies  protect patients at Musgrove Hospital

Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton is the home of Somerset Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (SNICU), a specialised ward for the treatment of premature and sick new-born babies within Somerset.

SNICU is situated in the maternity building of the hospital and divided into two different areas: intensive and special care. There are 18 cots in total.

Knight Electrical is a specialist contractor in power systems integration, undertaking generator controls and all forms of installation and site modification works.  The company has contracts with various hospitals, manufacturing facilities, schools and government organisations for the design, installation and maintenance of electrical systems.

In 2018, Knight Electrical was contracted to design and build a UPS plant room to protect all the power for Musgrove Park Hospital’s SNICU unit which looks after babies requiring continuous monitoring of their breathing or heart rate, additional oxygen and tube feeding. The specialist unit also offers short term intensive care and recovery and convalescence from surgery.

The hospital required a space-saving and cost-effective solution to protect the critical power to this important ward which offered the highest levels of power availability and a 60-minute run time in the event of a power failure.  In addition, the UPS needed to protect the power to the Maternity Theatre as well as future birthing pools.

Knight Electricals’ design took advantage of a piece of neglected land near the SNICU unit.  However, instead of incurring the significant cost of a new building, Knight Electrical came up with the innovative idea to adapt and convert a 20-foot shipping container into a secure UPS plant room.  This bespoke solution was designed specifically to meet the requirements of the hospital and to overcome the challenges presented to the team.

Andrew Winiarczyk Knight Electrical Contracts and Engineering Director commented: “We have been designing plant rooms for over 20 years, so are used to providing bespoke solutions for our clients, however, this is the first time that we have used this particular technique. Space was limited and this presented us with a real challenge, the shipping container proved the ideal solution as the entire plant room could fit into one 20-foot container.

“We modified the shipping container with insulation, boarded it and set it onto sturdy concrete foundations, slightly raised to remove the risk of flooding.  We also looked at a glass reinforced plastic (GRP) building as an alternative but concerns over fire risk and moisture quickly ruled this out.   The area around the unit was gravelled and fenced off and the result was a secure unit ready to house the UPS system to protect the hospital’s SNICU unit’s power.”

Centiel won the tender to supply 1 x CumulusPower Modular UPS 200kW N+1 with 60 minutes autonomy built into 250kW frame. Centiel supplied its 4thGeneration Modular UPS system: CumulusPower, with 9x 25kW intelligent modules, which allows space for the hospital to add an additional 25kW module in the future if/when the load demand increases.

CumulusPower is a three-phase, modular UPS which offers 99.9999999% (“9 nines”) system availability achieved through fully independent and self-isolating intelligent UPS modules – each with individual rectifiers, inverters, static bypass, CPU and communications logic and display.

The Intelligent Module Technology (IMT), with a fault-tolerant parallel Distributed Active Redundant Architecture (DARA), removes single points of failure to offer industry leading availability.  In the unlikely event of a module failure, it can be quickly and safely be “hot-swapped” without transferring the load to bypass and raw mains.

In addition, CumulusPower has been designed to offer the highest levels of resilience and complete peace of mind.  It can be maintained without the need to bypass to mains powerwhich means there is no risk of interruptions to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. It has also been designed to reduce the total cost of ownership through low losses.  The high double conversion efficiency of >97.1% at the module level means it is currently the best solution available to protect infrastructure as its configuration also reduces downtime risk, avoiding costly errors as well as increasing energy efficiency.

Stuart Cockburn, sales manager, Centiel UK, explained: “The main challenge with the installation was the compact size of the shipping container.  The UPS weighs only about half a tonne but the amount of batteries needed to support the Hospital’s requirement of a 60-minute run time was significant and weighed around nine tonnes, so took up a fair proportion of the space available.

“We created a bespoke design for the battery racks optimising the configuration for ease of access and maintenance of both the UPS and batteries.  We maximised use of the floor to ceiling space to create a workable area, ensuring there was enough room to allow for the rest of the equipment including DC isolation, bypass panel, UPS distribution panel and building management service (BMS) which all needed to be accessed readily for maintenance. The shipping container also needed to have room for air conditioning units plus emergency lighting.

Centiel supports the UPS with a comprehensive maintenance contract which guarantees a response within four hours, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Two preventative maintenance visits a year, 24-hour telephone support, free labour, travelling to site are included for full peace of mind.

Cockburn concluded: “The installation was completed in June 2019 and it will now protect the power for the patients at the important baby unit at Musgrove Park Hospital for many years to come.” 

For further information please visit www.centiel.co.uk

The speed at which we create this data is increasing at a bewildering rate. It has been estimated that we now create as much data in a single day as was created from the beginning of time until 2010! With the Internet of Things (IoT) any electrical/electronic machine/device will be capable of connecting to the internet and capable of creating data, so the situation is only set to escalate.

With all this data from all these devices the concept of Edge computing is to achieve lower latency and push the computing power closer to the source of that data.

Large mega datacentres will house the essential information securely. However, we also know that it makes logical and practical sense to filter and process the data as close as possible to its source. With this in mind, there will be a growing number of organisation specific micro and small datacentres operating at The Edge. Organisations today, are already starting to create their own micro datacentres, using them to store and process their data local to the organisation while the important data is moved offsite to the Cloud.

The micro or Edge datacentres of the future will attach to office and homes and their availability will need to be protected by electricity and therefore the utilisation of an Uninterruptible Power Supply system (UPS).

By defintion Edge computing facilities will be prevalent and small. The latest generation of power protection equipment is modular in design, with a range of module ratings, small in size, highly efficient and offering flexibility and redundency in a very small footprint. Nine 9’s availability is possible due to high module reliability and “hot swap” capability meaning systems do not need to be switched off, or transferred to external bypass to replace a module.

While technology improvements are always possible, when a UPS is almost 100% available and 100% efficient, there is not much further for the technology to go. However, UPS energy storage in the form of lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries will be a game changer. This is because Lead-Acid batteries in common use are relatively large and heavy and their use may be limited in the Edge micro datacentres of the future.

Li-ion batteries however, typically require less than half the physical space of the equivalent Lead Acid blocks and are less than 25% of the weight, they also operate at higher ambient temperatures so require less or no cooling. This means some of the environmental, floor loading and structural challenges of introducing a micro data centre into an existing SME on, say, the top floor of a London building will simply disappear.

In the future the introduction of Edge computing will see facilities managers needing to help support “local” micro and small data centres for organisations of all sizes. A well designed micro and small datacentre will last an organisation several generations of IT equipment whereas a poorly designed micro and small datacentre could cost an organisation a lot of money in terms of poor availability, wasted infrastructure and running costs.

CumulusPower CENTIEL’s scalable and flexible true modular three-phase UPS system that combines class leading availability and efficiency that makes it perfect for use in small, medium and large datacenters. However, not every application requires a modular UPS and for these applications and so we also offer our PremiumTower range. It has the same Swiss build quality and innovative technology seen in CumulusPower but comes in a lower cost, stand-alone cabinet, ranging from 10kW – 120 kW suitable for Edge applications. CENTIEL’s full range of UPS are all Li-ion ready.

Centiel supports the data centres of today and those 10-15 years into the future.

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In addition to 1-phase systems, 3-phase systems are also used in many places in industry and commerce. They often offer decisive advantages. It is important to ensure safe load balancing in order to prevent overloads.

"We provide services to data centres in the areas of power analysis, power quality, harmonic filters, power factor correction, voltage stability and arc flash. We understand the sensitive nature of this work and have built a trusting relationship with our data centre clients."

Andrew Hogan, Operations Director

Engineering success since 1977, Powersystems UK started from small beginnings just outside of Bristol providing a service only the local electricity board could previously offer.  40 years on, Powersystems UK has continued to provide excellent services for industrial and generation customers, providing the very best solutions for grid connections, electrical infrastructure, renewable generation, and high voltage maintenance.

In addition to 1-phase systems, 3-phase systems are also used in many places in industry and commerce. They often offer decisive advantages. It is important to ensure safe load balancing in order to prevent overloads.