Hospitals: why central battery systems win on maintenance, not on price

The real decision

Hospitals combine three factors that push the design towards central battery: a very large number of luminaires, a maintenance team that has to document everything, and a building that cannot tolerate a luminaire being out of service for weeks while a part is ordered.

With self-contained fittings, every battery is a separate item to inspect, test and replace, distributed across the whole building. With a central system, the batteries sit in one accessible cabinet and the testing is centralised. The installation cost is higher; the lifetime maintenance cost is usually much lower.

Where self-contained still makes sense

• Isolated buildings and annexes far from the central cabinet.
• Rooms where a protected supply cannot be routed without major works.
• Small clinics and consulting rooms, where a dozen self-contained fittings is simply the cheaper answer.

The mistake is treating this as an ideology. Many hospitals end up with central battery on the main campus and self-contained fittings in the outbuildings, which is a reasonable engineering answer.

What to insist on

• A commissioning record per circuit, with measured duration, not a declaration that testing was performed.
• Battery replacement planned as a scheduled cost from year one, with the pack specification recorded in the as-built documentation.
• Spare modules held on site for the warranty window, so a fault does not become a shutdown.
• For each luminaire, the model number written somewhere that survives five years of staff changes.

Documentation we can provide

CE (LVD and EMC) declarations naming the specific model, RoHS reports, CB certification through a TÜV certification body, and ISO 9001:2015 — plus the EN 60598, EN 61347, EN 1838 and EN 62471 test evidence behind them, issued per SKU rather than as a generic company certificate.

Batteries are warranted for 3 years and other parts for 5 years.