Finnish hospital revamps vital power distribution
Jari-Pekka Korhonen, HUS (left) and Sixten Holm, ABB (right). Image courtesy ABB.
A Finnish hospital area has modernised its power distribution tech with ABB-supplied upgrades, including complete protection relay and circuit breaker retrofits, as well as intelligent asset and energy management solutions.
The Meilahti Hospital Area in Helsinki, which is operated by the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS), has upgraded its electrical system to eliminate use of SF6 in the medium-voltage (MV) switchgear, extend the life of electrical equipment and optimise hospital operations.
The Meilahti Hospital Area uses the same amount of electricity a year as a small town, delivering healthcare to more than half a million patients annually; having a reliable and safe power supply is thus critical to providing a dependable service, where lives are at stake.
The upgrades, supplied by tech major ABB, included a turnkey MV circuit breaker retrofit, where SF6-insulated models have been replaced with next generation VD4 vacuum circuit breakers.
These new devices clear potentially harmful short-circuit faults in tens of milliseconds, thereby preventing severe damage to the hospital’s electrical infrastructure and minimizing the risk of downtime.
Aging relays in the switchgear were also replaced with ABB’s Relion protection relays from the 615 series, REF615.
According to the company, these protection relays offer extensive protection and control functionality to ensure uninterrupted power supply. For this project, a solution was implemented where reliable and fast arc fault protection is now ensured with ABB’s REA 101 modules.
The protection is based on optical arc flash detection with fibre-optic light sensors, tripping at arc faults in milliseconds.
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Critical power distribution
Jari-Pekka Korhonen, operations manager for HUS Kiinteistöt Oy, the organisation that manages real estate services for HUS, said in a release: “What matters most is that in our hospitals, the healthcare professionals can perform surgeries and treat patients safely – and that the power supply won’t cause any problems for them.
“We’re well-prepared to face any problems with the power distribution. This is all down to the reliable, high-quality products and solutions ABB provides.”
Added Sixten Holm, business development manager at ABB in Finland: “For service providers such as HUS, one of the greatest opportunities for improving reliability and reducing carbon and costs is by modernising outdated components, rather than replacing the entire switchgear. Replacing aging circuit breakers and protection relays can also be done quickly with minimal downtime.”
To reduce operating costs in the long term, it needed to be supplemented by an intelligent system that could optimize the hospital group’s maintenance activities.
ABB’s ability energy and asset manager was also installed to facilitate remote monitoring and provide HUS personnel real-time information on the condition of equipment, such as temperatures, with alarms from devices alerting them instantly by text message.
This level of predictive maintenance is hoped to ensure early warnings of any potential failures, providing crucial information to act upon and avoid unplanned downtime.
In addition, specific condition monitoring for the MV switchgear is now available, which allows HUS to carry out maintenance when necessary, according to the actual condition of the devices.
ABB’s SWICOM diagnostics system reports the mechanical and electrical health status of the equipment in real-time.
One unit, they state, is enough to cover the data of the entire switchgear system.
As part of the project, the low-voltage circuit breakers were also upgraded to enable connectivity to the ABB Ability cloud service for first-hand condition monitoring.
Added Sixten Holm: “It has never been more important to both optimise maintenance and operational costs and manage future demands, thus introducing SWICOM was a great way forward for HUS.
“It has enabled them to pre-empt unexpected outages, increase flexibility, boost efficiencies and maintain a digitalised electrical infrastructure that is fit for purpose.”
