I work in a hospital, so I have some insight into this.
First off, at least in Missouri, the receptacles, wiring, and circuit
breakers are rated for 20 amps each. SO, normally, this would not be a problem.
In fact, you could probably run the radio systems entirely on the red
receptacles all the time. I wouldn't try to put in any kind of relay, or
transfer switch, as that's handled down near the generators.
HOWEVER, I would definitely run this past the hospital's electricians to
ensure that the circuits involved do not have something else sharing the
circuit. Sometimes, alas, several receptacles may be fed by only one circuit.
This may have been the case with your "white" receptacles as well. So you need
to make sure that there's nothing else on that circuit that will overload
things.
I'll mention this, look and see if there was a laser printer on the white
circuit. They have high instatenous loads as they heat up the fuser drum, and
it might've been the combination of your power supplies and the printer coming
on that tripped the breaker. And keep the printer on the white receps, as
there's almost no reason to have a laser printer on emergency power (unless an
administrator orders it).
Ray Brown, CBET, BMET II (KB0STN)
Laryn Lohman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
We have two repeaters, plus an IRLP computer, on one emergency-fed
circuit at a hospital. There are normally no problems with this.
During a recent storm, the AC panel circuit breaker tripped, taking
everything down in the middle of our Skywarn net.
There are two receptacles near our equipment. One is normal power,
the other is the red Critical Power receptacle. What problems would
anyone see if we would feed everything from the normal power circuit,
and if it would ever trip off, switch to the red receptacle. That
way, if lightning trips the normal circuit, we would instantly feed
our equipment from the red receptacle.
This sounds so simple, and I'm inclined to build such a setup, but am
I missing something obvious that could cause problems? Any better ideas?
Laryn K8TVZ
