Guaranteeing safe operation of a nursing home in Australia

Segment background

Nursing homes are residential aged care facilities for elderly people who require ongoing health care and assistance with daily activities. These facilities require high-quality and reliable power systems to maintain essential services. With numerous electronic devices and medical equipment, it is vital to ensure everything operates as intended to guarantee the safety of residents.

Challenges at the customer’s nursing home

Our customer operates a nursing home in Australia, which had very strict electrical system requirements due to the critical nature of the medical equipment and devices used to monitor the state of health of the residents. Poor power quality can adversely affect biomedical measuring devices, potentially resulting in incorrect readings of blood pressure or heart rate and corrupting patient records. The severity of power quality problems depends on the number of critical loads susceptible to them, and in this case, losing even a single critical load could lead to serious health and safety issues or even loss of life.

In addition to the medical systems and electronic devices, the aged care home also had several other potentially problematic loads that needed to be considered. Facilities of this type usually have a variety of heating and cooling systems, as well as lighting, computers, and other electrical equipment that all require reliable and stable power supply to operate effectively.

Our Merus^® Solution

Our local partner Ampcontrol installed a Merus^® Hybrid Power Quality Compensator on the site. Merus^® HPQ is a modular solution that consists of a detuned capacitor bank and Merus^® A2 Active Harmonic Filter modules. It provides the facility with an economical solution for dynamic reactive power compensation and harmonic mitigation. The smart control software of Merus^® HPQ monitors the system parameters and provides adaptable and flexible power quality control, ensuring that all the equipment operate efficiently and reliably at all times.

Results after installation

After installing and commissioning the Merus^® HPQ solution, overall power quality was improved, and sensitive equipment was guaranteed not to be affected by adverse power conditions in the future. The detuned capacitor steps fulfill most capacitive reactive power needs, while the Merus^® A2 modules handle the intermediate steps and inductive reactive power while also filtering the harmonic currents and balancing the unbalanced currents. The safety of nursing home residents and the reliability of critical medical equipment are ensured.