sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information UPS for the PBX

I work in a hospital with 1700 station. Our UPS is very dated and they want to upgrade it with a very good used UPS which has plenty of capacity. We already own this UPS
The trouble I'm having with it is twofold:
a.) They want to add something else onto the same UPS.
b.) They want to move the UPS out of the 'phone room' to a new power closet close by.
What are your thoughts.

1,700 stations? I seriously doubt that the PBX of this size is running on a traditional UPS. Are you sure it isn't running on a battery bank and a rectifier/charging system? What kind of PBX do you have?

All of the hospitals we deal with have a UPS on the Data/Comm circuits just strong enough to hold until the back-up generator kicks in.

So you will need to do some homework and figure out how many watts/amps you will need to hold and for how long.

Well, as Mike says what is the PBX load now, what do they want to add and what is the capacity of the UPS for how long? Simple math.

As for (B) I have never seen your hospital or what you are talking about so I have no idea what's involved. Betcha a local EC would though.

-Hal

OK, it's a BIG UPS. Battery bank and rectifier. Pretty much apples to apples, I'm thinking it's still an uninteruptable power source but maybe I'm once again manifestiing my ignorance. Either way the old one will hold up the Avaya G3siV11 for only about 20 minutes. The new one is much better maybe an hour or an hour and a half.
What they want to add on to the battery bank and rectifier is what we call "Rythm Central", which is a bunch of screens (maybe 10) watching the heart monitors of the patients in ICU.
The new power closet is 30 feet east, 30 feet north and 50 feet back west, to put it about 10 or 15 feet northwest of the phone room.
On the positive side, it's a totally reworked power closet with all new transformers and circuit breakers and it will give me more space in a very cramped phone room.
Maybe I should just shut up and go with it.
Thanks guys, for your input.

Maybe I'm getting old, I don't like changes. Or maybe those really are valid concerns. What do you think?

First off, why are these "critical" systems not on a stand-by emergency generator? The UPS could be sized accordingly based on the amount of time an emergency generator takes to come up to full power and transfer the load. Typically, a large enough UPS would only have to handle the load for a few seconds, no more than a minute.

That said, you need to look at the name plate power specifications of every cabinet that had an AC power plug that is now connected into an outlet and start adding the watts. If watts are not given, then add the amps. Once you have all the devices which require back-up added, then it is an easy matter to determine how large an UPS you require. Remember, UPS systems are designated in VA (Volt-Amps) and you must convert Watts to VA. A really simple and fast way is to multiply the total watts by 1.43 and you will get an approximate VA.

If you really want the exact numbers, there are formulas that take into consideration power factor (Pf) as well as total time required for the equipment to be in back-up mode.

Rcaman

Everything is on emergency generators.

I don't see anything to be concerned about.

-Hal

You're going to run into problems mixing patent equipment with telecom equipment.

Anything that has to do with patents has it's own special requirements and it better that you just create a new UPS plant for these monitors instead of trying to jury rig them onto the telecom system.

Just my opinion