Medical laboratories relying solely on off-the-shelf UPS devices to protect against power outages are leaving themselves vulnerable to a multitude of more serious power problems, warns Powervar
The company argues that while power cuts are an obvious power problem they account for less than 10% of power related problems for UK businesses.
The other 90% relate to less visible but potentially more damaging power disturbances like electrical noise, voltage spikes and impulses.
These problems can cause lab equipment to lock-up, lose data, or behave unreliably and also significantly reduce the life of electronic devices.
Electrical reliability is more than just power outages.
Because electricity is used to power sensitive mission critical technology the quality of the electrical power is just as important as its availability.
Outages affect the average electrical system for about 8.8 hours per year, while other invisible power disturbances add approximately 79 more hours per year, where the electrical system does not reliably deliver electrical power that meets the needs of high technology equipment.
"Like an iceberg, it's what you don't see that is most dangerous," comments Kevin Beavan, Powervar's UK managing director.
"This is the single biggest reason why power conditioning, even as part of a UPS solution is so important.
"People obsess about blackouts but they're such a minor part of the story.
"Applied in the right manner, Powervar power conditioners and/or power conditioned UPS solutions eliminate these hidden problems and add much needed reliability to the electrical power delivered by the power company".
"Powervar has a proud track record in the medical laboratory," explains European medical sales manager, Tony Bell.
"Modern instrumentation and medical equipment relies extensively on semiconductor technology and is therefore vulnerable to power problems.
"We've worked with many labs where service technicians which have been baffled by intermittent problems like instruments aborting, hanging up or producing obviously erroneous results.
"The labs were incurring considerable extra cost obtaining and re-testing samples.
"Powervar's expertise enabled the labs to diagnose and resolve the culprit - poor power quality".Powervar designs, engineers, and manufactures power protection including power conditioning products and uninterruptible power managers (UPMs) suited for industries including medical imaging, clinical and analytical diagnostics, retail, hospitality, information technology/telecommunications, semiconductor manufacturing and testing, industrial automation and robotics and digital printing and graphics.
As well as standard UPS functions Powervar's UPMs are also equipped with additional features to improve mains power quality and offer an advanced level of protection.
These features include an isolation transformer to guarantee delivery of completely conditioned power, the ability to select operating voltage and automatic adjustment for line voltage changes.
