Power Distribution Control System Successfully Upgraded on a Live Hospital
Applied Integration UK Ltd have successfully completed a hardware and software upgrade on one of Europe’s top hospitals with minimal disruption, believed to be the first upgrade of its kind within the UK.
The University ‘super’ hospital’ in Coventry is an NHS Hospital with clean modern facilities which rival the best private hospitals with 1250 beds and 27 operating theatres. The upgrade was carried out on the power distribution system which supplies the hospital with essential and non essential electrical power, these include critical systems for life support and patient care.
The electrical mains are supplied via three off 2500 amp distribution panels situated on the roof of each block. All floors have local electrical distribution panels that are supplied from the 2500A distribution panels via redundant electrical feeders. Each local panel has the ability to switch between redundant electrical feeders using a motorised bus coupler likewise all non essential outgoing supplies have motorised breakers which can be opened to suit the status of the incoming supply.
The existing solution was constructed using three separate redundant ControlLogix PLC systems, one redundant pair located within each of the 2500 amp distribution panels. Each redundant ControlLogix PLC then communicates with 14 separate floor electrical distribution panels via a network that was constructed of a radial Ethernet on fibre to each floor, which was also to be upgraded to a ring topology improve system resilience.
The challenge to Applied Integration was reprogram the PLC & SCADA systems ensuring all essential supplies were available from the generators within 15 seconds of a mains failure and upgrade the network with the minimum of disruption to a working Hospital. This was achieved by utilising extensive offline testing, which involved testing 100% of functionality and I/O on a purpose built test rig. After client approval, the system was successfully installed over several months utilising the hours between 11:00 pm and 04:00 am as to minimise the disruption on the Hospital.
The new software was re-written in a supportable manner plus the addition of a number of new features added to the system means that the on-site maintenance team can quickly diagnose and resolve system faults i.e. failure alarms and breaker failure group status.
The system has been running without incident since October 2007 and further upgrades have been successfully implemented on the system after the success of this project.