Power Quality Issues in Healthcare Industry (Case Study)

The healthcare environment comprises of various combination of sensitive electronic loads and other commercial loads. Hence maintaining quality power is essential and critical.As the medical devices are sensitive, poor quality power affects their performance. Electrical disturbances will lead to lock up of the devices. Power quality problems may arise due to non-linear loads, injection of harmonics, and interaction between medical equipment. Common sources of power quality problems found in hospitals . Since power quality problems are cumulative; power quality events (detectable in an audit) can lead to loss-of-life and eventually premature equipment failure. An attempt was made to identify the power quality levels to assess the quality of service received from the utility and locates the areas within the hospital where problems arising from instability exists or may develop in the near future.

The hospital under study has the following types of power supply. 

Normal Supply (NS) is a direct utility supply (HESCOM) for non-essential areas. 

Essential Supply (ES) is used for areas of medical importance that are not critical to patients in the case of supply interruption. 

The essential supply is backed up by an emergency generator. 

Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)/stabilizers is used for operating theaters, patient monitoring and other equipment that is important to the well being and safety of patients. The hospital complex under study has incoming supply of 11kV from the utility. Transformer with Δ-Υ connection and solidly grounded is used to buck the voltage to 440 volts. The critical medical loads are: X-ray, CT, MRI, ICUs, operation theaters which contains surgical suits etc.

Case study 

The methodology employed was taking the measurements of voltage, current, % voltage THD, % current THD at few medical load points and other miscellaneous loads using an Energy audit kit (Fluke) at Reputed College of Medical Sciences & Hospital, Chennai, The data obtained were compared against the IEEE 519 standards for analysis. 

X-ray Here X-ray equipment is fed from essential three phase supply. But no stabilizer is employed. X-ray circuit consists of primary and secondary sections. Primary will get normal three phase supply and the secondary will step up the voltage in terms of kV which will inturn builds up the capacitor to charge when the circuit is closed (when exposure button is pushed) . When pre-selected charge is reached, the capacitor completes the circuit & sends the charge to the x-ray tube. The voltage THD was found to be 5.2%, which is more than IEEE 519 standard.

Computed tomography (CT) CT scan uses powerful x-ray technology that circles the body as the patient, lying on a moving, flat table, passes through a very shallow tunnel, commonly referred to as the donut. The fast moving parts of the x-ray source and detectors are within the donut and out of sight. As the Xray assembly rotates around the patient's body, the scanner produces images in thin slices which a computer reconstructs into sharp, three-dimensional (3D) images of the scanned body part. CT is fed from UPS in this hospital. The THD for current under operating condition was 6.01%, voltage THD was found to be within limits.

MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) An MRI (or magnetic resonance imaging) scan is a radiology technique that uses magnetism, radio waves, and a computer to produce images of body structures. The MRI scanner is a tube surrounded by a giant circular magnet. The patient is placed on a movable bed that is inserted into the magnet. The magnet creates a strong magnetic field that aligns the protons of hydrogen atoms, which are then exposed to a beam of radio waves. This spins the various protons of the body, and they produce a faint signal that is detected by the receiver portion of the MRI scanner. The receiver information is processed by a computer, and an image is produced. MRI is fed from UPS in this hospital. A phantom bottle assy and a head coil was used as a simulator instead of patient. The voltage THD was found to be closer to the

limits, but the current THD was 7.9%, and was more than current distortion limit for the system’s ISC/IL ratio. The ratio is 20 for this system.

Cathlab Cardiac Catheterization is a complex medical procedure that is used to diagnose and treat a wide variety of heart conditions. During cardiac catheterization, a narrow tube called a catheter is inserted into the femoral artery near the groin with a plastic introducer sheath. The catheter is guided through the blood vessel to the coronary arteries with the aid of an x-ray. The procedure is performed by a cardiologist in a specially equipped room know as a Catheterization laboratory (cath lab). The most used cathlab equipment consists of an x-ray generator, contrast, and catheters  The CATHLAB was fed from UPS. The voltage THD was found to be 4%, which is exceeding the standards prescribed for hospital premises. 

Surgical suits The supply to the surgical suits was highly distorted. Both current and voltage distortion were beyond limits. Another observation was found to be of unbalance in three phases. This results in neutral current to flow back to the transformer. 

Other loads These loads consisted of pharmacy, administration blocks, store, lift panel, supply to surgery OPD. This implies that load is of mixed type. Lot of current harmonic distortion was observed along with unbalanced load current. The neutral current was high. At the main panel also, current distortion was found to be 7%. 

Observations The analysis of the system highlighted some aspects. They were high THD a unbalanced load currents. These both contribute to high neutral current which will flow back to transformer neutral resulting in excess heating of the neutral cable. As the THD increases, the neutral current also increases 

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Panchsheel Benefits of Power Quality Studies @ Industries

In order for your Industry or Plant to run efficiently and effectively, you need electricity. If you experience a dip or spike in power, your efficiency suffers, and you run the risk of several other problems. In order to prevent issues and allow your industry to perform at its best, you need to conduct power quality studies. A power quality study refers to the delivery of the necessary energy to electronic equipment in order for it to run properly. 
Here are a Major benefits of power quality studies why you need them for your Industry.


What is a Power Quality Study?

A power quality study measures the supply of power to AC power units. This includes voltage, current or power factor. A sudden, or even a gradual, change in power can greatly affect your power quality, reducing your efficiency or causing other problems.

1. Power Quality Studies Detect Disturbances

Power quality studies are diagnostic tests performed on your machines to tell how they are doing. Pro Circuit provides temporary monitoring of these machines and your power systems to check for power distribution and possible disturbances that can decrease productivity. By detecting issues early on, you can fix them before they become much bigger problems.

2.Power Quality Studies Prevent Interruptions

When you have an interruption of power – be it a dip, a spike, a surge or an outage – your service, and your machines, stops, even if only briefly. Even a brief interruption, especially several over many days, weeks or months, can lead to significant decreases in efficiency and productivity. When you suffer these interruptions, your output, in turn, suffers as well.

3.Power Quality Studies Save Money

If your power is not optimal, or is interrupted, your business faces severe decreases in productivity. Not only that, but power surges or dips can lead to malfunctioning, or even broken, equipment. When this happens, you need to have your machinery fixed. These fixes can be costly. So, not only do you lose out on money because you’re not producing as much as you would normally be able to, but you lose even more to repairs. By not earning as much and spending more, this brings you further away from your financial goals. By finding issues head on, power quality studies not only help you save money, they can even help you generate more revenue in the long run.

4.Power Quality Studies Allow for New Machinery

If you add new machinery, your power gets redistributed in an attempt to run it along with all of your current machines. If your service or panel isn’t big enough, you are likely to run into dips in power and decreased productivity. Before you add new equipment, a power quality study can tell you if you need to upgrade your service or increase the size of your panel in order to keep your efficiency and productivity the same, if not better.

5.Power Quality Studies Increase Safety

If power is improperly provided to machines, they run the risk of overheating. When machines overheat, they run the risk of breaking down. Some overheated machines can even catch fire, which creates a very dangerous situation for not just your business, but your employees as well. When your business is destroyed by fire, you lose money to repairs and by being completely shut down. But if the fire is devastating enough, your employees could be injured, if not worse. Power quality studies can help prevent any of these problems from happening by detecting issues early on.

Don’t let your efficiency and productivity suffer. #Emerich can provide you with power quality studies, keeping your Industries running Effectively. 

Contact us today to request a best offer for your power quality study!

Importance of Power Quality

Good power quality is extremely important in “high-tech” facilities such as manufacturing plants, data centres, hospitals, and, as well as in “low-tech” facilities such as government buildings and commercial enterprises with limited tolerance for electrical disturbances.

Compromised power quality can have costly repercussions, ranging from premature aging/damage of equipment to reduced productivity and interference with business as usual. Common causes of variations in power quality include voltage sags, spikes, and swells, short and long interruptions of power lasting from a few milliseconds to 2+ seconds, and harmonic disturbances.

Facilities vested in good power quality can take advantage of power quality monitoring systems that, operating 24/7, use hardware including sensors and meters to measure electrical sensitivity, software to record and interpret the data, and wired and wireless communications to inform management about what went wrong that affected power quality and where in the electrical system it happened. Power quality monitoring also can keep tabs on a facility’s emergency/backup and/or standby power system.

1. Early detection of an incipient problem. Awareness of a problem early on, before it escalates and when it is easy to address, minimizes the likelihood of costly interruptions to operations and, possibly, avoids the need for emergency repairs during inconvenient times.

2. Power quality analysis that takes advantage of continuously recorded waveforms that can identify such anomalies as power outages, sags and swells, and transient harmonics, cycle by cycle in milliseconds, can compare current operating parameters of electrical equipment against the manufacturer’s baseline to detect any anomalies that could lead to inefficient operation or failure. The ability to review stored, continuously recorded waveform helps in the diagnosis of problems before an unwanted event recurs.

3. Power quality analytics also supports forensics, allowing management to determine how a chain of events occurred as it did, such as why a facility lost a particular breaker that tripped the power distribution unit and resulted in a switch over to the UPS. Power quality analytics could, in that scenario, pinpoint what the root cause was – e.g. a short, an electrical spike, or a floating ground.It can also pinpoint power quality problems that can prematurely age equipment.

4. Power quality analysis can also be used for pre-function testing to look closely at systems and their responses and to simulate transients and other events. Historical records become a baseline that can be compared to equipment and component performance over time, enabling detection of performance trends that can be interpreted to enhance preventive maintenance programs, predict future power requirements, and aid in plans for additional electrical equipment, such as servers or variable frequency drives to control energy costs.

Please click the below link to understand the Power Quality Investments and ROI for Industries, Commercial Buildings

http://apqi.org/webinar/2nd-webinar-high-roi-for-industries-commercial-buildings-from-investments-in-pq-case-study/

FOR POWER QUALITY STUDY & AUTOMATED REPORT:  Connect with Emerich Energy

Please write to us info@emerich.in Call: 044-48577667