ISOLATION TRANSFORMER

1. There are 2 types : 1a. Primary and secondary Isolation only. 1b. Isolation with shielding. 2. Purpose of isolation without shielding : 2a. For patient and operator safety. 2b. Most, if not all medical equipment have in-built isolation transformers. One for each equipment. 2c. The only exception is perhaps the PC or printers. Some have and mostly do not have, especially for general applications. 2d. Isolation is also use when the operating voltage of the medical equipment is different from available mains supply voltage at site. Example : If a medical equipment operates at 380V 3p but available mains is 415V 3p. Then a step down transformer with isolation is used. 2e. In some sites, where the grounding is not acceptable, very costly to re-do, resulting in high floating voltage between neutral and ground, one can use an isolating transformer to remove this floating voltage by grounding the SECONDARY winding neutral and normal mains ground. This is subjected to the medical equipment can allow such grounding. 3. Isolation with shielding. 3a. All mains supply, besides other power related problems, have electrical noise to prevent. Level of these noises varies from location to location, time to time. There are many contributing factors to these noise. 3b. If the level of these noise are high enough, beyond the tolerance of the equipment, the performance of the equipment can be affected. 3c. A normal isolation cannot remove these noises. 3d. A isolation transformer with shielding can reduce the level of these noise to a safer acceptable level.

4. If you use a normal standard UPS system (without isolation) to protect a complete medical system, ONLY the live voltages (Red, Yellow and Blue phase) are completely isolated with the mains supply WHEN UPS is in operation and running. This is, each phase is completely isolated, free from noise, and all other power related problems. However, the neutral is shared. That is, the mains supply neutral, the UPS neutral and the medical equipment neutral all linked up together. In this case, if any noise, etc.. are present in the neutral of the mains supply and UPS supply, these noises will get into the medical equipment. 4a. If the UPS is overloaded of fail, the UPS will transfer electronically, automatically, the mains normal supply directly to the medical equipment. By using a isolation transformer, with or without shielding, some level of safety, etc.. will be achieved. 5. Base on our past installations of UPS for Medical equipment and about 20 years in this field : 5a. One major area is that need isolation is because the operating voltage of the equipment is different from mains supply available. Example : Equipment operates at 380V 3p but available mains is 415V. User would use a step down transformer with isolation. Equipment from Japan uses 208V 3p, but available mains is 415V. User would use a step down transformer with isolation. 5b. Very poor normal site grounding resulting in high neutral and ground voltage which equipment cannot tolerate or accept. Too expensive to do new or re-do existing grounding. A isolation transformer with secondary neutral grounded is the fastest and cheapest solution. 5c. Other than above, very few of our customers uses isolation transformer. Mush lesser users of transformers with isolation and shielding. 5d. For 10KVA, 20KVA, 30KVA, and up to 60KVA, so far, none of our users asked for isolation transformers for UPS, other than for stepping down voltages.

Neither have any of these users complained that their equipment have problems because of no isolation. 5e. For the 125KVA UPS installed at a Hospital in Kuching. The main reason isolation was included was because the 12-pulse rectifier module, with or without isolation, price difference was only 5%. Because of this small price difference (approx RM 1.8K only), we decided to provide isolation. 6. You can have isolation transformer built in as a package with the UPS. 6a. You can have isolation transformer separated from the UPS. 6b. You can upgrade the UPS with isolation if the need arises, but space must be plan ahead. In this case, the UPS will be separated from the transformer. 6c. If you choose to have separated Isolation transformer, you can buy locally or import. In most cases, imported version from developed countries are much smaller in size, more efficient, look nicer, compared to local make. This is due to technology limitations of local made. 6d. If you decide to include isolation, will be better if comes with the UPS because of full integration and no taxes and duties if shipped together with UPS. If import transformer only, by itself, used to be 25% + 10% duties + taxes. I do not know present duties and taxes because, for years, we have not imported transformer as stand alone unit.