CSE Pure Power - Summer 2008 - (Page 28)

❯❯ PURE POWER // SUMMER 2008 28 healthcare story advise our clients to locate their critical systems and equipment above the 100-year ﬂood plan and where they will be protected from the impact of ﬂying debris during a hurricane. In addition to the power that backs up the data, the room itself is just as important. For data centers, providing dedicated reliable cooling is key. If the rooms get too hot, the electronics will not operate, no matter how much emergency power is ﬂowing to the racks. Are air-handling units (AHUs) serving the room that is on emergency power? Are the chillers on emergency power? AHUs connected to emergency power without chillers connected to emergency power will just end up blowing hot air through the data center, and the equipment won’t function for long under these conditions. The case studies that accompany this article teach us an important lesson: No single thing makes a data center’s power safe and reliable, even in a hospital. It takes the right pieces, parts, equipment, location, and design to ensure the system’s reliability. O&M trips up hospital Recently at one hospital, the existing emergency distribution, installed many years ago, included the UPS units serving the data center feed from the equipment branch of the emergency distribution system. On the same distribution panel as the UPS were several air-handling units, elevators, and compressors. One of these motors had a fault, but instead of the breaker directly upstream of the motor tripping as it should have, the fault carried upstream two levels of distribution and tripped an upstream distribution breaker, which turned of power to a signiﬁcant portion of the equipment branch, including the equipment distribution panel feeding the UPS units in the data center (the tripped breaker was on the load side of the ATS, so the generators and ATS were not a factor). After the batteries in the UPS depleted their 45 min. of capacity, the data center was without power. If the UPS units had been served by a critical branch of the emergency distribution system, completely isolated from any motor loads, this would not have happened. Even though all the pieces were in place—emergency power, multiple generators, ATS, and UPS systems—a single failed motor and a malfunctioning breaker, neither of which had anything to do with the data center, were the weak point in the data center’s reliability. Design and maintenance are essential to system reliability. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gelfo is the director of the Jacksonville, Fla., ofﬁce of TLC Engineering for Architecture. This ofﬁce focuses on hospital design. Providing a clean, cool environment for the equipment is critical to its reliability. www.purepowermagazine.com http://www.purepowermagazine.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CSE Pure Power - Summer 2008

CSE Pure Power - Summer 2008 Contents In the News Industry Roundup Risk Assessments for COPS Grounding Requires More Power Systems to Protect Healthcare Important Changes Coming in NFPA 70E A Look at Arc-Resistant Switchgear Agencies and Associations New Products Ad Index

CSE Pure Power - Summer 2008

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