DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Any Cleveland Clinic people out there?

Hey all,
I'm researching a major equipment purchase, and Cleveland Clinic is on the customer list from one of the vendors. I would love to speak with some one out there, and if any of you have inside info, it would sure beat cold calling!

There's a lot of equipment in hospitals...what are you interested in?

I am buying an inline power conditioner and/or 100kVA UPS for several CT scanners and an MRI unit. Specifically, I don't like the quote and lack of specific information I received from Toshiba, so I am exploring other vendors. Cleveland clinic is on the customer list for CPN, who I am favoring at the moment, but I would like to have some customer experiences before dealing with any new company.

Have you looked at anything from APC (American Power Conversion)?

IMHO, they are Name #1 when it comes to power, be it battery backup units or power/line conditioning.

To tell you the truth, they were one of the first companies I looked at. I have found some medical grade systems through search engines from APC, but I've spoken to three reps who insist they don't have them. I think they've actually gotten a little to big and rely on their resellers, but, other than PC sized stuff, I can't find any resellers.

I thought their Symmetra line scaled to the 100kV range, and all of the backup units do line conditioning as well.

I'm not sure what distinction there is as far as it being "medical grade" though... but I definitely thought they had equipment that would handle those types of loads.

Just out of curiosity, what is power line conditioning??



KING

Essentially, it is evening out the power.


Standard electrical current has LOTS of peaks and valleys to it (if voltages were viewed on a graph). A Line Conditioner essentially smooths all of that out leaving you with stable, "clean" power for your sensitive electronnics. Among the obvious surge suppression and battery backup reasons, it is one of the most important reasons to ensure your high end home electronics are on a battery backup and not just some cheap surge suppressor or outlet strip. It is essentially voltage regulation that knocks down spikes and provides extra to bring up the sags.

This explains it better than I can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_conditioner

Thanks for posting that, I feel edgeyoumacated!

Symetra is too small for what I need. I need 100K Volt Amps at 480 volts. I need an 18 minute runtime and it needs to be an inline system. Medical grade really doesn't mean anything. There are measurable specs I can compare, but the bottom line is I have to keep my warrantys intact so I have to have equipment comparible to what Toshiba was offering me. The tolerance is very low with sag and surge in medical equipment. I'm looking at + or - 1% or less. There has to be 0 switching time also.

Zoinks man... I have no suggestions for those specs, heh

I would say it is safe to rule out APC, TrippLite, Belkin.... all the usual suspects. You're definitely into SpecialtyLand

It's definately a different animal. But I know I've seen APC units in the past. I like the company that I mentioned, CPN, they have given me all the specs I asked for etc. I just want to talk to some actual users, and it gave me a chance to make an inroad at the Cleveland clinic. They supposedly run 12 cath labs off of one 750 KVA unit.

Ok, so the power conditioner provides a steady ellectical source with no peaks and alleys. Does it do it by means of a electrical capacitor? The capacitor works as a buffer between the power coming from the street and the power going to the end user? Depending on the size of the capacitor this gives you a certain amount of backup time between the time of the power outage and the time your back up generators come on line?


KING

My understanding is that it usually works through a combination of a battery (from the battery backup portion), capacitors/resistors and also magnetic induction.

The battery portion in helping make up for sags is self-explanatory.

You can use resistors and capacitors to smooth out some of it, but they can only do so much. A capacitor has to have ample charge to make up a shortfall, and after enough shortfalls it will have nothing left to make it up, and if a resistor tries to step down too much power, it can blow and let loose the 'magic blue smoke'.

Magnetic induction works by placing two coils close together, but NOT touching. This gets into the relationship between electricity and magnetism, specifically the part where all conductors with a current in them produce a magnetic field. You can concentrate that effect by coiling it around a piece of iron or other ferrous metal. This will generate a field proportional to the current flowing through it. Conversely, if you pass a conductor that has a path to either ground or a positively charged terminal through a magnetic field, you will produce a current in that conductor. So, if you then create an indentical coil next to the original and place it close enough, the magnetic field from Coil A will induce the proportional current onto Coil B... but the power on Coil B will be steady and devoid of surges and sags (don't ask me why or how on this part, it goes beyond my current understanding).

In regards to all the staph infections by our Brownies, I dont think anyone on this board is going to admit they have anything to do with the Cleveland Clinic.

Makes sense Prpl, thanks.

KING

Hey bud, the people you wanna talk to is Liebert. I used to be an Account Coordinator for scheduled maintenance there. Ohio company too..

Products
Precision Cooling
UPS Systems
Server Racks and Cabinets
Power Distribution and Power Conditioning
System Monitoring
Surge Protection

Check out the web page:

http://www.liebert.com/

Some of the smaller, parallel units, simply store energy and monitor for line changes. Sags of whatever level they are set to activate for switch the unit to intenally generated AC power from the stored energy. Surges are trapped through induction.

The inline units never actually transmit line current to the device. They store and regenerate electricity. This way, there is almost pure AC current supplied to the circuit at all times.

Conditioners generally use capacitors and rectifier circuits with zener diodes to filter and fill. They sort of regenerate on a continuous basis but are limited by the size of the capacitor.

Thanks, I'll look into that.

Do you know if they do medical systems too?

They do entire buildings.. hospitals, Govt and Military installations. BIG units.

A rectifier converts AC and DC current. Batteries store DC and need to charge from DC. Most appliances and electronic equipment requires AC.

Zener diodes are just diodes, a one way gate for electricity, which stop conducting at a certain level. That way, they would not pass electricity if it reached the zeners high limit.

You might have used some sort of bridge rectifier circuit charging the capacitor from a rotary generator. It's also possible that you protected the capacitor with a zener diode.

Some of the new car audio "systems" use 1 farad capacitors or more I would guess to drive the base by providing a reserve power source. Most capacitors are measured in micro farads, 1 farad is big, and caps can be dangerous. That's why it's not good to mess around in old TV sets even when they aren't plugged in. Caps will release energy extremely rapidly when they are allowed to.

Did you break your pocket protector while writing this post?