The consequences of hospital outages

Between extreme weather events, cyber-attacks, and aging electrical infrastructure, grid outages have never been more frequent and varied. As a result, it’s become necessary for hospitals to hedge against disruption with backup power solutions, especially as outages can be unpredictable, expensive, and, most importantly, life-threatening.

When the power cuts out, medical equipment ranging from ventilators to dialysis machines can cease to function, disrupting patient care and preventing acute medical procedures. Moreover, without electricity, healthcare facilities struggle with essential tasks such as maintaining patient records or running diagnostic tests, further compounding the crisis. If these hospitals do not have backup power that provides enough electricity to cover the entire facility, they are forced to choose which critical systems to power, often at the cost of patient comfort or operational efficiencies.

Beyond these immediate concerns, secondary risks also come into play during a power outage. For instance, the inability to control the temperature of hospital storage facilities can lead to the spoilage of blood supplies, temperature-sensitive medications, and vaccines, rendering them unusable. Similarly, key areas like operating rooms and intensive care units require stringent temperature control for optimal patient care, which can be compromised during an outage.

Patients want their hospital to provide complete confidence, and an outage can create doubt in a hospital’s ability to deliver the level of care they are looking for. Just one outage can have long-lasting consequences for hospitals. The negative reputation gained by failing to prevent an outage can be difficult to combat and can add to financial losses extending beyond the immediate impacts.

Hospitals need ways to be more sustainable

In the face of escalating global environmental challenges, hospitals – like all sectors – are under pressure to reduce their environmental impact. This includes minimizing their carbon footprint, local emissions, and noise pollution. One area where this responsibility comes sharply into focus is with their backup power plans.

Traditionally, many hospitals have relied on diesel generators for backup power. While these generators can provide power during outages, they come with significant environmental drawbacks. Diesel generators emit harmful pollutants, including particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide, which contribute to air pollution and have detrimental effects on human health. Additionally, they produce substantial greenhouse gases, contributing to the carbon footprint of the hospital and exacerbating climate change.

Resiliency without compromise

While renewable energy sources like solar and wind are a promising path toward a cleaner and more sustainable future, their practical application in mission-critical environments like hospitals is often limited. Solar or wind power can be unpredictable and susceptible to fluctuations in weather and other external factors, which can lead to inconsistent power supply. In the context of hospitals where reliability is paramount, this unpredictability can pose significant risks.

In contrast, natural gas backup power systems offer an attractive balance between reliability and sustainability. Natural gas generators can quickly respond to emergency power outages, ramping up to full capacity within seconds. This rapid response time ensures that critical hospital functions – from life-supporting equipment to temperature controls – can continue without disruption, even in the face of sudden power outages.

Unlike diesel generators that need to be refueled, natural gas units can operate continuously for extended periods, providing a stable and reliable supply of energy. This ability to provide long-term power solutions makes natural gas particularly suited to hospitals, which need to maintain their operations 24/7, regardless of external circumstances.

From a sustainability perspective, natural gas also holds the upper hand over diesel. Natural gas burns cleaner than diesel, producing fewer emissions that contribute to air pollution and climate change. Specifically, natural gas emits significantly less carbon dioxide than diesel when burned. Additionally, natural gas generators tend to operate with less noise and vibration compared to their diesel counterparts, contributing to quieter and more comfortable hospital environments and their surrounding communities.

Enchanted Rock’s solution in action

The natural gas-powered electric resiliency-as-a-service solution offered by Enchanted Rock offers cleaner local emissions than diesel by orders of magnitude, with practically zero run limitation—allowing hospitals to support both resiliency and sustainability initiatives. In fact, in 2022, Enchanted Rock’s generators became the first of their kind to secure the California Air Resources Board Distributed Generation (CARB DG) certification, which has some of the strictest emission requirements in the world. The systems are both Joint Commission Compliant and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) compliant, which streamlines the adoption of microgrids as a suitable source for backup energy. Enchanted Rock’s healthcare microgrids can also be used concomitantly with solar and battery integration, allowing the hospital to move swiftly toward their ESG goals while simultaneously providing a safe and stable environment for their patients. And, due to their lower compression ratio, Enchanted Rock solutions are inherently quieter than similarly sized diesel generators.

Hospitals including Citizens Medical Center, located in Victoria, Texas, have turned to Enchanted Rock’s microgrid solutions as a means to sustainably maintain power resiliency. Prior to working with Enchanted Rock, when Hurricane Harvey swept through the Gulf Coast in 2017, Citizens experienced the immediate impact of power failure. During Harvey, the loss of both water and electricity prevented even critical applications from functioning and required Citizens to evacuate patients to a safer location, resulting in $6 million of lost revenue for the hospital and potentially inhibiting their ability to provide the utmost patient care.

Since switching to Enchanted Rock’s services, Citizens’ efforts to combat outages have been far more successful. During a grid outage event in 2022 that lasted more than 4 hours, Enchanted Rock’s natural gas microgrid ran without issue, avoiding facility shutdown or delays and ensuring continued staff and patient confidence. Financially, the hospital avoided at least $200,000 in lost revenue and was able to further restore the community’s trust in the hospital’s ability to fully serve its patients.

Efforts to reduce emissions and build resiliency can be pursued simultaneously. While backup power is not a new concept, hospitals have traditionally used diesel generators, which can be unreliable and can produce emissions harmful to both the environment and human health. By coupling microgrid services with a cleaner, yet still reliable fuel such as natural gas, hospitals can stay resilient while at the same time reducing their carbon footprints and improving local communities.