Im trying to put a list together of general device power consumption.
Does anyone have or know where I can get such a list? ECRI, Hayes,EBME?? Its all to do with carbon foot print. I would like to make our hospital management aware of the power consumption effects of medical devices. Im sure this has been done before and monitored somewhere.
I guess the list will go something like this
MRI
CT
Ultrasound
Lasers
Diathermy/ESU
Ventilation/Anesthesia
Monitoring
ETC
ETC

Some help would be appreciated

TX
TSS

Are you thinking of trading in 'Carbon Credits' I think this is 'excellent' you buy stuff that you cannot see, touch and as far as I understand has no value when compared to gold or silver, when all your investments have dwindled away the traders will shrug their shoulders and tell you "that's the way the market works"
www.advancedglobaltrading.com is the place to 'waste' your money.

Aaaah, No.Not at this stage anyway.
Just wanting management to take carbon foot prints into consideration when buying equipment. A good example is boilers. you can buy cheap and nasty but the unit will be so inefficient, it makes more sense to buy the more expensive one and benefit long term.
You can apply this logic to certain medical devices as well. Thats why Im looking for some sort of list that can give us some guidance as to where the power hungry machines live.
Tx

I haven't heard of anyone doing this. You would have to check the specification for each individual item, from the label on the machine, or the manufacturers' spec in the manual or online.

Is there a point to this? None of the devices you mention will have a very high power rating compared to, say, the hospital's heating system. And there aren't really any low-power alternatives to theatre and intensive care equipment.

I suppose you could carbon-offset by planting trees. How nice to do it in situ, and create a small wood around the hospital!

Moira

PS I would hesitate to bring this up with management. Some managers are so far removed from the daily business of healthcare that they might insist that vents are turned off overnight!

Haaaarrghh, very true indeed. I can just picture the request to shut down vents and monitoring after 6pm. LOL.
Checking each item spec would be very time consuming and too deep for this low level investigation. Suppliers are reluctant or too lazy to give this info.
I agree that heating and lighting are the biggest culprits and need to be managed accordingly. The figure we calculated on changing over from halogen to LED theatre lights came up with a 50 % power reduction and about 8-12K saving on lamps per year per hospital.
We might be limited in alternative low power equipment but making an educated decision when buying power thursty equipment should be considered.

Maybe we should give those managers a spade and a sapling to start the carbon offset.LOL
TX
TSS

No. None whatsoever.

What are we expecting to happen here? Nurses going around switching off the kit?

OK ... just plant a few trees so there will still be a few around to hug in twenty or so years time.

Next case please!

That's your opinion. People have reasons for asking questions, even if you don't think they are relevant.

It's not your call when a thread should be moved on.

Lets not waste energy throwing comments around! I could never expect a nurse to run around switching off devices that are'nt in use. Perhaps some clever dick can build that into the programming and save us all the hassle.
Perhaps you've been missing the point. By highlighting the different device's power consumption we can make people aware of the long term effects it has on our carbon foot print. Perhaps you are not aware that all your companies get charged carbon tax on your energy usage. That is about 8% of your energy bill. Thats a fair sum on a large hospital or big office building. Id rather have that in my christmas bonus than donated to the taxman!
Geoff, here's your spade and sapling.LOL

I'm not really a "tree hugger" I'm afraid (far from it). I have to get by in the real world. And I've never received a Christmas bonus (or any other that I recall) in my entire life.

Define "carbon foot print". It is another contentious issue just like "global warming"*. It is a smoke screen, a will-o'-the-wisp (or worse).

And "carbon tax" is just that. A tax (yet another). The government would tax the air we breathe if they could. And just how is this "carbon usage" measured, I wonder?

If you want to work out how much power the kit uses, it shouldn't take too long. Just get hold of the hospital's electricity bill. Or if you need a list of the "high burners", any Estates Department should be able to give you that (if they're interested, which I doubt). Apart from the x-ray equipment, and a few special systems like linear accelerators, most medical equipment (although there may be a lot it) is relatively lightweight in comparison with the hospital plant gear.

What are you getting at here? Charging folk a surcharge for having a chest x-ray? Patients have enough to worry about without wondering about "carbon debts". To be frank, that will be (and is) the least of their worries.

You can't do much about the Laws of Physics, and I don't see why folk should be punished for simply using a few more Watts than the next guy (just as long as he pays for it - in money). I bet that the famous address in Downing Street uses far more in a month than I use over five years (and I chip in for their bill, as well as forking out for my own). And as I mentioned recently, we haven't quite perfected the LED x-ray emitter just yet.

And who are these people who need to made aware? Again, as I have suggested only recently, just get them (the hospitals) to turn down the heating by two or three degrees. That way, folk might even better a bit sooner as well.

Medical equipment in government hospitals financed by the Public Purse should be purchased with only the one aim in mind:- clinical need.

Lastly, let's look at it from a slightly different angle:- how many coal-filled power stations has China commissioned this year?

That's all.

* Anyone heard from Al Gore recently?

Well, I must admit that all this carbon foot print / global warming mania is sheer nonsense. There is much agreement amongst scientists that the world is warming, but what the hell do we think we can do about it? Surely it is not all man made, it is a just natural cycle of warming and cooling of the earth. Being a greybeard (no doubt like Geoff) I remember years ago being told that we were heading for the next ice age. They whoever "they" are, are only surmising, I wouldn't worry too mcsh about it (bit like the 2000 millenium disaster when "they" told us everything was going to shut down if it had a micro chip in it) the Chinese and Indians aren't caring much, no wonder their economies are growing.

As I'm sure you understand, Barney, it's all part of the "business as usual" aimed (and seemingly succeeding) at keeping the plebs in their place.

You see, the Lower Orders (aka the Great Majority) need to be kept anxious, on the back foot, and made to feel guilty about having the temerity to exist. Nanny is most efficient when the campers (happy or not, but preferably not) are compliant. After all, we can't have them thinking for themselves now, can we?

If it's not "global warming", it "carbon debts". And if it's not "carbon debts" it's something else to worry about:- terrorism, the poor polar bears, too many magpies (now that's a real problem), racism, the starving kids in Africa, the next "super-bug" ... you name it. It's all our fault, you know. Your's and mine.

So please forgo your food this week, and give generously to ... ... ...

Meanwhile the NWO types in charge continue to live the High Life, snouts firmly in the trough, whilst we're all scared [censored] about what's ahead in the New Year. But we needn't worry, because (as I say) it's all going according to The Plan, and there's sweet FA that any of us can do about it! Happy Days.

You've hit on one of my conspiracy theories Geoff. I believe that people in the West have moved away from conventional religion and need something beyond their understanding to worship/ fear. No one can say how our planet works so we can make up any dogma that fits certain events: tsunami, floods earthquakes etc. and blame ourselves for it.
The real driving force behind all of this climate change malarkey are the power generating companies and the governments that subsidise them. In most of the developed world power stations are generally old and inefficient and require replacement. This combined with the need to increase capacity means that they need to spend a huge amount to upgrade their stock. Obviously their shareholders will not tolerate a drop in profits and governments will only subsidise them so far, so the short term solution is to invent a way of reducing the amount of energy we use. As for Al Gore being the stalwart of green energy it should be noted that he was director of a major US nuclear energy company and has a vested interest in promoting nuclear power.
On a global scale about 20% of the earth is land mass and we occupy less than 10% of that. Do we really believe that the actions of 2% can really affect the weather of the entire planet?
Perhaps instead of being in awe of the planet we are deluded enough to believe that we have the godlike power to control nature?

Back on track(ish) some idiots at our hospital take great pleasure in switching off lights in the belief that they are saving the planet. There is a corridor in our building which is part of the fire escape route where certain people turn the lights off. I hope for their sakes that they are not trampled underfoot trying to get out of a burning building in the dark!
And another thing, why is Carbon getting all the bad press? After all isn’t it Carbon Dioxide that the scientists are beating us up with? I love Carbon, in fact I couldn’t live without it!!

... furthermore, the Good News is (according to what I have read recently) that the One World Government Gang (the Bilderbergers ... NWO, or whatever you want to call them) have suggested that they need to reduce World Population to around 500 million or so. The likely method of achieving that aim being the "accidental" release of a Super Bug.

Not sure how they're going to ensure the selectivity of the bug ... but there you go. No doubt they're working on that little problem even as we speak.

Meanwhile, back to the Do-Gooders. To my mind, part of the problem these days is we have increasingly fewer (what we might call) practical people around ... and more and more hand-wringing *Wallies, Jobsworths, busy-bodies and miscellaneous prats ... who, although probably acting with what they believe are the Best of Intentions, are in fact Part of the Problem. Big Time!

* Apologies in advance to the few remaining folk out there blessed with the good old English name of Walter!

If I may throw my two bob into the hat:

The problem I see here is that power consumption alone is not sufficient to get a valid "carbon footprint".

Something like a boiler, a fridge, a lightbulb, will probably have a fairly regular duty cycle. A medical device, by its nature, may have a very irregular duty cycle.

Added to that, power consumption in certain devices can vary quite a bit. An infusion device, for example, draws significantly more current at say 500ml/hr than it does at 5ml/hr. The light above my head, by contrast, probably draws roughly the same current all the time it's on.

Trying to get anything like a valid figure seems like it would be rather involved, and very time (and energy!) consuming, to be honest.

If they're not already aware of the Electricity Bill, then I guess that they, too, are part of the problem!

I would advise our friend TSS to seek out another horse to flog.

I would suggest something aimed at improving efficiency in delivering healthcare, rather than simply "saving money" per se.

Folk need to realise that large government funded healthcare organisations are not about "saving" money ... but rather about spending it:- but hopefully in the most cost-effective, outcomes-driven ways possible.

Any penny that is not directly aimed at the delivery of healthcare needs to be justified to those who are handing those pennies over. And if the tax-payer disagrees with that expenditure (eg, obscenely high "executive" salaries), then that funding should be discontinued.

This is somewhat complicated subject. Location information as you want to change.
First of all, how much of a deviation to make generalizations have identical coefficients.
For example, the energy consumption for a complex CT machine and the same technology. As a standard value, the manufacturer said, you could base the maximum values. Device to collect a lot of the technical document, a table of statistical results by making yourself as possible. still a work in this business will take some time. In this regard I am sure that if you have a working machine park are taken into account the share of total energy. May be a clinical or total issued.

Radiology clinic.

CT
MR
xray
Mammogrphy
U.S.
Anjiography
ETC ...

need more power for same time using ...

Oh well, that clears that up, then.

Meanwhile if folk working for the NHS are really keen to make a difference (save the planet, whatever) they could make a start by seeing what can be done about the extortionate amounts shelled out for having simple maintenance work done under botched PFI contracts (as reported in the news today, yet again).

I agree and respect most comments BUT it doesnt help to stick your head in the ground and wait for things to pass. Energy effeciency is everyones responsibility and it takes a norrow minded society to think otherwise. Certain ecomonies dont give a sh&t about the planet and hopfully they will see their backsides when all their natural resources are used up. They know this and thats why they are buying up chunks of 3rd world countries and poaching off coast lines because theirs is depleted through gross mismanagemet and greed.
Now , thats an entirely different discussion for another day.
As far as medical device comsumption is concerned, I still think you are missing the bus on this one. Power comsumption and energy efficiency should be taken into consideration before employing a new technology or device into our hospitals or business's for that matter.Nothing to do with charging it out or making anyone pay more. More energy efficient big thursty devices means less power and therefore a longterm saving for everyone.

Now go and hug that tree....LOL

TSS

Our Trust is looking at a voltage optimisation system which would see our mains ac voltage reduced from 240+ to 220V at end point. This will reduce costs to the Trust.

Have any other Trusts implemented such a system and have any adverse effects been noted? My particular concern is in regard to medical devices but all comments would be welcome

Welcome to the forum Lee.

Your namesake has been there before.

Thanks Geoff

Have you any ideas on the knowledge I seek?

Nothing much to add to what was said in the other thread, really.

Has any proper cost-benefit analysis been carried out?

A bit of kit drawing 100 Watts is still going to need 100 Watts whatever voltage is being feed to it.

My own gut feeling is that the whole idea would end up being yet another waste of money.

In my experience these gee-whiz schemes are usually dreamt up by folks looking to make Big Bucks out of clueless "managers" of other people's money. The NHS being a prime target, of course (but not the only one).

Bottom line? Waste of money. Leave as is.

The paper that Bill put a link to made interesting reading, from memory it split equipment into basic types ie heating, lighting, switch mode power supplies etc, running tests on each. The conclusions were that the only area that real savings would be made was in lighting.

We decided against it in the end (yes we might be able to save on consumption but the payback period looked long).

A couple of things to think about are - our Isolators need recalibrating if the mains voltage changes (yes I know! poor design); the voltage does not arrive at the Trust at 230 volts it comes in via a HV transformer which has various tappings. With the assistance of a proactive works department the voltage could be monitored over a reasonable period and the possibility of changing to a more appropriate voltage investigated.

Lee

Interesting idea. Never heard of that being introduced anywhere. Look forward to feedback.