Eta Projects Ltd, the Engineering Design and Project Management specialists, were commissioned by the Hammersmith Trust to undertake a risk assessment of each of its sites and implement essential upgrade works to meet the expanding and critical demand of its IT infrastructure. They commissioned the advanced Delphys DS system, which has the benefits of a small footprint, extremely low harmonic re-injection and IGBT technology.

The Hammersmith Hospital NHS Trust’s IT backbone system comprises of a large IT room with several secondary communications rooms, strategically located around three other sites located in West London.

UPS systems are a minefield to the uninitiated and due to the hospital’s critical function; it is imperative that they are selected correctly and designed into the electrical infrastructure to provide maximum capacity and resilience at all times.

To maintain the integrity of the installation, Eta Projects specified Socomec Sicon, which won the tender under a sealed bid process to replace the original scheme, which, due to load increase, was no longer able to meet N+1 capacity. Cost studies were carried out and it was found to be more cost effective to completely replace, rather than upgrade the existing system. This enabled advanced technology to be employed. The new UPS modules are configured in parallel redundancy, each sharing the load equally but each rated to carry the full load if necessary.

The Socomec Sicon UPS system specified, comprises 2 x 120kVA Delphys DS UPS systems, which are 12-pulse, double conversion, true on-line technology and are rated for a ‘Crest Factor’ of 3-1 minimum. The system is complete with two dedicated power distribution units (PDU’s) and remote SNMP alarm monitoring.

The UPS systems were designed for maximum resilience and flexibility and the low voltage distribution was designed with a Mains/Generator Wrap around bypass system to enable the Hospital to completely bypass the UPS modules with ‘No-Break’ in the event of a catastrophic failure. Dual modules with facilities for an additional module to be added were provided on the switchboard to ensure the N+1 redundancy is maintained even with future load increases. The switchboard was manufactured to Form 4/2 complete with Surge Protection.

The UPS distribution is fitted with intelligent power meters, which are configured to activate alarms linked to the hospital central power monitoring system when pre-determined values are exceeded

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