Method of Estimating Uncertainty as a Way to Evaluate Continuity Quality of Power Supply in Hospital Devices

The article presents issues related to the determination of the continuity quality of power supply (CQoPS) for hospital electrical devices. The model describing CQoPS takes into account power redundancy. The uncertainty modeling method based on the certainty factor (CF) of the hypothesis was used to establish the single-valued CQoPS factor. CQoPS modeling takes into account multidimensional quality models and physical stages of power. The quality models take into account seven dimensions that make up CQoPS (availability, appropriate amount, power supply reliability, power quality, assurance, responsiveness, security). The model of power stages includes five of these stages (power generation, delivery to recipient, distribution by recipient, delivery to device, power-consuming device). To date, when designing hospital power systems, the applied reliability indicators revealed limitations because they do not consider all the possible factors influencing the power continuity. Estimating the supply continuity quality with the use of the uncertainty modeling proposed in this article allows for taking into account all possible factors (not just reliability factors) that may affect supply continuity. The presented modeling offers an additional advantage, namely, it allows an expanded evaluation of the hospital supply system and a description using only one indicator. This fact renders the evaluation of the supply system possible for unqualified staff. At the end of the article, some examples of calculations and simulations are presented, thus showing that the applied methods give the expected results.