Florida Hospital Lightning and Surge System Upgrade
Florida Hospital is a 2,048-bed, acute care, not-for-profit system. Their Florida facilities had long been plagued with electrical, electronic and structural damage due to lightning and other “dirty power’ problems.
A two month investigation revealed that there was degradation of their structural lighting protection and a mismatch of improperly sized and poorly installed surge protection. As a result, they actually had very little effective protection for their highly sensitive electronics.
Healthcare facilities are required by AHCA to have multi-point Faraday cage structural lightning protection, so The Preventor 2005 was added to enhance the existing Faraday systems. During the installation process, each building grounding system was improved to insure that the structural lightning protection systems performance would be maximized. Total Protection Solutions surge protection devices were installed on the main electrical services, distribution systems and motor control centers. A surge suppressor utilizing a wide band filter was installed on Critical Care electronic grade panels to provide clean power to their sensitive electronic equipment.
A review was conducted one year after the installation process. The findings were:
- No lightning damage whatsoever since installation of The Preventors
- Reduced downtime of microprocessor equipment in biomed
- Reduced circuit board replacement in diagnostic equipment
- Reduced downtime and lockups in administrative equipment
- Clearer ultrasound images
- More reliable operation of x-ray computer equipment