Out of Site, Out of Mind, Out of...Power

by Jodi Holland on 3/29/21 12:12 PM

Industrial generators are an organization’s lifeline to keep business running in the most critical of situations. In the instance of Healthcare facilities, their lifeline variable extends all the way to saving lives. With this type of responsibility, you’d think an organization’s standby power solution or plan would be continuously top-of-mind, but this is not always the case. Unfortunately, the old saying “out of sight, out of mind” usually proves to be true.

generator

In many instances, industrial generators aren’t thought about until they are actually needed. And the other 99.9% of the time, they’re just sitting “out back” collecting cobwebs or worse—critters. That is, until the next emergency situation when the power goes out and suddenly, the generator is expected to be the star of the show. No time for a dress rehearsal, it’s opening night, and the curtains are opening if you’re ready or not.

So, what happens in that emergency situation if the lights fail to come back on??? It happens more often than Facilities Managers would like to imagine. But why is this the case? Isn’t a generator supposed to save you and your facility in your time of need? Yes, but you have to meet it halfway. The number one reason a generator fails to generate power during these critical times? Lack of maintenance.

Like every other piece of your critical infrastructure, your standby power solutions need tender love and care. Just like your car before going on a long road-trip, you want to make sure your vehicle is in good working condition, with enough gas and oil to get you where you’re going. Otherwise, you run the risk of being left stranded on the side of the road. Or in the case of the generator, left in the dark of your building when it’s without power (and losing revenue… or worse).

Maintenance programs comes in many forms, and dictated by either the nature of your business (i.e. Healthcare having specific requirements defined by HIPAA and NFPA) or your organizationally defined plans. Some look at a once-a-year check-up as being sufficient, but that's just the bare-minimum. Okay, at least you’re acknowledging it’s existence, but we at DVL recommend a check-up at least once a year as the better you are with the maintenance, the less time you’ll have to spend there, and also, the life of your equipment will be extended. Above all, however, you will have piece of mind knowing that it hasn’t been anywhere close to 364 days since a trained factory technician took a look at your equipment. Therefore, quarterly or even monthly check-ups are recommended, which are preventative maintenance program that exist for the more critical of facilities.

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These visits include a variety of steps, beginning with Jobsite Safety Assessments.  If you’re not intimately familiar with industrial generators, they can be dangerous. Our factory-trained DVL Technicians advise customers to do cursory checks around the GenSet areas, but to leave the more technical of steps to certified professionals. Our teams go beyond “run tests” by checking filters, fluid levels, and performing batter checks; along with manufacturer defined diagnostic tests.

In our recent #BeyondTheProduct podcast, we sat down with Generator Service experts to discuss the details and more. Give a listen, or check out information on DVL product and service options from Generac Industrial Power on our website.

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Topics: service, generator, hospitals, standby power

Anticipating Your Organization's Growing Pains

by Robert Leake on 9/30/20 11:16 AM

The third in a series of posts that explores the vital signs of a healthcare system’s critical infrastructure, this blog looks at growth at the healthcare edge and lays out the key considerations for ensuring your infrastructure has an agile skeletal system, accommodating changes in healthcare delivery models and the exponential growth of healthcare data.

Growing pains aren’t unique to people. Organizations of all types experience them as they attempt to stretch already strained resources to handle increased demands. Healthcare may be one of the most impacted industries with the influx of patient-generated health data and the growth of remote outpatient sites.

According to an IDC report, The Digitization of the World From Edge to Core, healthcare data is projected to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 36% through 2025. That’s enough data to fill 12 quadrillion miles worth notebook paper laid end to end, circling the earth 485 billion times! These organizations are struggling with how to store, manage, analyze, and secure the immense influx of information from established and ever-emerging technologies (i.e. EHR, digital imaging, IoMT, artificial intelligence, telemedicine, and wearables). As the volume continues to grow exponentially, they need a healthy infrastructure that can scale with it.

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While today’s healthcare organizations cannot afford to overprovision, they do need ways to add capacity quickly as needed. Like the human body’s skeletal system, their infrastructure must provide scalable, flexible, around-the-clock support and the highest level of protection as data and equipment are added.

Keys to building scalability and agility into your infrastructure:

  • Future proof your strategy with modular products that can support anticipated growth. Modular products give organizations the flexibility to grow as they go, reducing upfront costs and eliminating overprovisioning. Many modular products are available today, including:

    • Modular UPS. “Bricks” of power and battery modules can be added or removed according to output power requirements. These products not only support flexibility and scalability needed for edge applications, but also improve energy efficiency, serviceability, and availability at the same time.
    • High density modular cooling. As power demands increase, so do cooling requirements. Cooling solutions for high heat density systems are available in open or closed architecture, and pumped refrigerant-based or water-based technology. By using optional pre-charged flexible piping with threaded quick connect fittings, they allow for expansion without interruption of cooling operations.
    • Alternative thermal solutions. These solutions fit easily into racks within environments managing heat in small spaces and makes cooling possible in places where traditional equipment simply won’t fit. The Vertiv VRC offers the convenience of a plug and play solution with three heat rejection options, energy-efficient features, and scalable capacity, allowing IT managers to quickly add cooling when and where it’s needed.
    • Modular rack PDUs. Choose intelligent systems that easily integrate with your data center infrastructure management system, enabling yourself to stay on top of power usage and adapt to changing business needs as you grow.
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Considering the need for connectivity and visibility with each new asset you deploy, along with how those assets will be organized and protected within the space constraints of network closets, smart cabinets, or micro data centers, will help set the stage for effective monitoring and management of the distributed IT environment, a topic we will explore more deeply in our next post in this series. This not only supports more effective management of your current IT environment, it also gives you the ability to know where devices reside, how power is being used, and where space is available to simplify expansion planning.


To learn more about supporting growth at the healthcare edge, contact DVL to discover how our solutions are helping healthcare organizations achieve continuity for life.

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Topics: Data Center, efficient data center, hospitals, power distribution

Understanding the Critical Infrastructure Behind Healthcare Facilities

by Jodi Holland on 4/23/20 3:22 PM

In recent years, the IT world has been seeing a movement to the Edge across most industries, especially in the realms of Finance, Legal, and Healthcare. Now, the Coronavirus pandemic has added a new variable to the Edge equation for Healthcare, as facilities across the country are constructing additions to their hospitals in support of testing and providing care. A recent DVL webinar addressed this rising concern, with many of the products and solutions discussed (and here below) being applicable to Edge environments in any industry.

healthcarehero

Unfortunately, there is no playbook for building these temporary facilities. While they do require the same types of critical infrastructure as facilities we’re used to creating, they demand an even greater sense of confidence in their operability. The aspects of building out temporary facilities are not terribly different than what is typically driving the demands of Healthcare IT: Electronic Records Management, Artificial Intelligence, and communications amongst staff and with patients and staff. The critical infrastructure supporting these applications must take into account an additional set of considerations for these temporary facilities:

  • Footprint Size
  • Power Requirements
  • Environmental Conditions
  • Procurement & Installation
  • Deployment Timeframe
  • Infrastructure Monitoring

If a Playbook were to exist on this topic, it would include chapters like:

  • Defining your specific applications
  • What do those applications require to operate
  • How do those requirements translate into critical infrastructure, and
  • How to build your infrastructure for efficient operations.

This is where DVL can be helpful to your project. Our commitment to going “Beyond the Product” means we don’t just sell you equipment and move to the next customer. Rather, we are here to help you connect the dots and present you with solutions to meet your objectives. Each project is its own unique venture as we work with you to define and understand everything from power and cooling requirements driven by your specific IT applications, to what type of rack is best suited for your peace of mind.

Temporary-Healthcare-Facilities-Buying-Guide-1No matter your industry, if you weren’t able to join us for the one-hour webinar, we invite you and your colleagues to watch the recording here. Or, you can download our Buyer's Guide for a better understanding of the aforementioned critical infrastructure considerations.   

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Topics: server room, healthcare, hospitals, beyond the product

Finding the right architecture for power protection in hospitals

by Emerson Network Power on 3/30/16 8:42 AM

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If you’ve read the post about distributed and centralized bypass architectures, you’re probably evaluating the right architecture for a new datacenter, or maybe you’re re-designing the one you’re currently using. The decision is not easy and it will often impact the operation and performance of the power protection system in your datacenter or the connected loads. Unfortunately, in technology there is rarely a simple “yes – no” or black – white” answer, and this holds true for power distribution as well. Yet, in technology and science, there’s a “grey area”, in which the ‘right’ decision is strongly influenced by the specific context and case, and is dependent on many parameters. Luckily, there are paths to find the best solution as a trade-off between the multiple parameters involved.

If you’re considering the use of an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), it means you are worried about the possibility of utility power failures and the associated downtime problems that follow. Given this, the selection of the appropriate configuration or architecture for power distribution is one of the first topics of discussion, and the use of a centralized, parallel, distributed, redundant, hot-standby or other configurations available, becomes an important part of it.  While there are numerous architectures to choose from, there are also several internal variables that will require your attention. Fortunately, a few elementary decisions will make the selection easier. Even if not all parameters can be matched, it’s important to at least begin the conversation and explore trade-offs and other considerations. Without trying to be exhaustive (which would require a dedicated white paper), you should consider at least the following:

a) Cost: more complex architectures will increase both your initial investment and your cost, not only at the initial design stage but during the entire life of your power system, especially with regards to efficiency. In other words, we could say that complex architectures will increase your TCO.

b) Availability and reliability: how reliable should your power system be? And what about single or multiple points of failure? Would you need any type of redundancy?

c) Plans for growth: Do you expect your power demand or capacity to increase in the future? Will you re-configure your load distribution?

d) Related to the previous point, but highlighted separately because of its importance for UPS is modularity. Do you need a modular solution for future expansion or redundancy?

e) Bypass architecture; an important point as explained in a separate post.

f) Need for monitoring of the complete UPS power system, also considering any shutdown of loads, and in combination with other systems like thermal management.

g) Service and maintenance: Once the initial investment in power protection has been made, please do not forget to keep it at optimum conditions. This maintenance at regular intervals has to be achieved through service contracts, check for spares availability if multiple types of UPS are used, capability to isolate a subset, or use of remote diagnostic and preventive monitoring services such as Emerson Network Power’s LIFE for maximum availability.

h) Profile of the loads; especially if you’re considering a few large loads or many “small” loads (perhaps distributed across several buildings or in a wide area such as a wind farm), autonomy required for each load, peak power demands, etc.

In addition, the decision is not only related to the internal requirements of the power systems, but it is also linked to the type of load or application to be protected, as requirements and decisions may vary depending on the application being industrial, education, government, banking, healthcare or data center. For example, an application where the loads are servers which manage printers in a bank, compared to a hospital where the power protection systems may manage several surgery rooms, are by no means the same. In fact, in the case of bank printers, in the worst case they can be shut down, while in the case of the surgery rooms, their shutdown is not an option unless for scheduled maintenance. This is because a non-scheduled shutdown of the medical equipment in a surgery room would have a serious impact on the people inside that room for a surgical operation.

Let’s take the hospital example further and consider a particular case. In order to do a quick exercise and simplify, we can use a scenario with several surgery rooms as a reference (for example 5 to 20 rooms, each one with a 5-10 kVA UPS for individual protection), plus a small data center (for example with 30 kVA power consumption) and finally, other critical installations in the facility (let’s assume 300 kVA for offices, laboratories, elevators, etc.).

In this scenario, initially, the architectures that could be envisaged as a first step are:

1. Fully distributed, and for simplicity’s sake, a hospital with 10 surgery rooms is assumed here with 10 kVA for each surgery room plus a centralized UPS (>330 kVA) for the remaining loads.

2. A fully redundant solution based on a centralized UPS protecting all the loads (this UPS being in a parallel redundant configuration). The power for any of these UPS would be 300 kVA + 30 kVA + (10 x 10 kVA).

3. An intermediate solution, referred to as “redundant hot standby”, so that this redundant UPS is sized only for the surgery rooms (10 surgery rooms x 10 kVA), and with a bypass line connected to the large centralized UPS (>430 kVA). This solution shows the advantage of a smaller capacity required for this redundant hot standby UPS.

Emerson Network Power has done several simulations based on typical scenarios as the one described above for a hospital, and considered the factors for optimization a), b), e) and h). Considering the parameters for optimization, the energy savings (power consumption and heat dissipation), initial investment (CAPEX) as well as the maintenance costs (OPEX), the solution based on the “redundant hot standby” seems to be the most convenient.
Moreover, the difference between architectures 1 and 3 is larger as far as quantity of surgery rooms or period for cost simulation (from 1 year up to 10 years).
This points us in the right direction in selecting the best distribution architecture for this application in hospitals and using these parameters for optimization. Clearly, it can be enriched using the other parameters shown in the sections above, or adapted to the particular case (quantity of surgery rooms, autonomy for each load, power demanded by CPD room, reliability, …) that could lead to a different choice, but globally, this redundant hot standby has resulted in a good trade-off.

As said at the beginning, there is no magic solution for the optimum selection, but we have sought to explore several guidelines and check points that will help drive you towards the best solution for your case. Of course, any additional variables and the reader’s experience are welcome and can only serve to enrich the discussion.

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Topics: Data Center, PUE, energy, UPS, Efficiency, Thermal Management, DCIM, Uptime, sustainability, energy efficiency, preventative maintenance, power system, healthcare, hospitals

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