ELECTRICAL RESILIENCE
Innovative circuit breakers for Oxford’s largest hospital
Mike Porter, Business Development manager at electrical distribution and control specialist, Electrical Distribution Solutions, who has ‘a wealth of knowledge on switchgear’ gained throughout a lengthy electrical career, describes a project undertaken in very rapid time, with minimal disruption, at Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital, to replace obsolete low voltage air circuit breakers with retrofit variants, which will significantly extend the life of the existing switchboard at a cost of under one-third of a new switchboard.
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides a wide range of clinical and specialist services – which include cardiac, cancer, musculoskeletal and neurological rehabilitation, as well as medical education, training, and research. It says that ‘collaboration with the University of Oxford underpins the quality of the care we provide to patients’.
As of the end of 2020 the Trust
had 1,133 beds – which included 946 general and acute beds, 79 critical care beds, 18 for rehabilitation, and 90 for children. With 58 inpatient areas, 48 operating theatres, and 11,904 staff at that point, the Trust has over 1.5 million patient contacts annually, and serves the growing populations of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, West Berkshire, Northamptonshire, and Wiltshire, although patients come from even further afield for specialist procedures.
Electrical switchboard issue The power required by the Trust’s largest acute healthcare facility, the John Radcliffe Hospital in Headington – Oxfordshire’s main Accident and Emergency site, which provides acute medical and surgical services including trauma, intensive care, and cardiothoracic services – is distributed at 11 kV through a network of high voltage cables to four sub-stations, where it is transformed down to 415 V for further distribution into the hospital buildings. Each transformer feeds a main low voltage distribution switchboard, which were manufactured by Ottermill, which ceased trading many years ago. The switchboards date back to 1974 and are now obsolete. The unavailability of spares, and the low voltage air circuit breakers becoming problematic, gave rise to major concerns over the reliability of supply, and the Trust’s Estates Department faced the dilemma of how to maintain
reliability and continuity of supply with obsolete switchgear.
Space constraints Consideration was given to replacement of the complete switchboard, but with space limited, and with the Trust not willing to see the electrical distribution system put at risk – a potential scenario being one transformer isolated in order to install a new low voltage switchboard, the customer looked for an alternative, innovative solution. I thus met with Mark Martin, the Trust’s Operational Estates project manager, to discuss and gain an understanding of the operational issues and constraints faced by the hospital. Upon completion of a joint site visit, Electrical Distribution Solutions proposed and tendered a solution. The joint site visit between the hospital
Estates Department and Electrical Distribution Solutions revealed that the
Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital in Headington is the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s largest hospital, and Oxfordshire’s main accident and emergency site.
February 2022 Health Estate Journal 59
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