Bender UK says its new Linetraxx power quality monitoring (PQM) units can enable clinical facilities to ‘substantially reduce costs’ by identifying faults before they become a problem – ‘avoiding unexpected downtime and time-consuming maintenance for critical power suppliers’.
Bender’s PQM devices also act as energy meters while checking system quality, determining the energy consumption per cost centre, and ‘reducing high overhead costs’.
Linetraxx can, for example, show the effects of faulty network components, or interaction and interference on the efficiency of the network. The PQM units can also ‘ensure the quality of electricity supply’ – by tracking and recording fluctuations in current that can adversely affect functions such as data storage – providing a record that can be matched to system issues.
Other factors that impact on the quality of the power infrastructure in hospitals, Bender explains, include the wide range of electronic devices in use, such as monitors and televisions with switch mode power supplies, which can lead to a ‘dirty power system’, with increased current build- up on the neutral conductor. This can, in turn, (the company says) generate problems including overheating and risk of fire.
In addition to providing ‘power system transparency’, to enable FM teams identify actual and potential ‘hotspots’, PQM also offers kilowatt hour metering, to provide a comprehensive picture of power usage from a control standpoint, for example identifying lights, heaters, and computer terminals left switched on.
Bender adds: “The dual function of monitoring energy consumption and energy quality thus assists in reducing energy costs, while simultaneously delivering high availability of supply.
A comprehensive view of the energy consumption across a specified network and the availability of that network can, Bender adds, be gained using the company’s COMTRAXX CP700 Condition Monitor. Bender explained: “Used in conjunction with Bender monitoring systems, the CP700 brings transparency to electrical systems. An intelligent display and control unit, the Bender CP700 Condition Monitor has an integral 7 in touchscreen, which enables intuitive on-site operation and clear user customisation, visualisation, and diagnostics, for the Bender UK PQM devices. The CP700 communicates with all connected Bender monitoring devices, and clearly presents all the relevant information for total electrical system transparency.”
Bender says the CP700 Condition Monitor ‘optimises presentation of the entire power supply system on various terminal devices through uniform presentation and readout of all Bender devices, with optional active alarm generation’. No programming skills are required for set-up, and, in event of fault, CP700 provides guided fault analysis. The system also allows dial-in access from a remote computer for real time updates.
Bender’s Power Quality Management and Energy Measurement devices can identify individual faults only if the system area monitored is clearly defined, to deliver data on the energy consumed by different departments and the time-based pattern of use.
This in turn enables the FM team to identify potential energy cost savings opportunities.
The company adds: “Power quality monitoring is particularly effective when combined with residual current monitoring (RCM), and advanced on-line earth fault location systems, to monitor power systems. The Bender systems are widely used in UK medical facilities, and detect degradation in the level of insulation in an installation or component – again improving availability – by signalling problems at an early stage before safety shutdown. Combining Bender’s RCM and PQM units provides energy management and power quality monitoring in one software application, offering qualified evaluation of the measures implemented, and the value delivered.”
