Centrica Business Solutions, an energy resilience specialist offering products and services ranging from demand-side response to CHP and battery storage, questions how well prepared healthcare facilities are for energy-related failure, warning that ‘even the briefest power outage can damage equipment and interrupt critical processes’.
The company said: “Thorough energy resilience planning can ensure staff and patient safety, prevent reputational damage and financial loss, and provide significant payback by informing energy efficiency savings and ensuring that the organisation optimises the use and performance of off-grid assets, including the potential to participate in lucrative Demand Side Response schemes.”
Centrica Business Solutions says there are ‘four key steps’ to building an energy resilience strategy:
- Understand your building energy profile, and complete a full site engineering study to know where the vulnerabilities are.
- Assess the impact of varying durations of power loss by identifying critical (e.g. IT) and non-critical systems (e.g. HVAC), and prioritising back-up solutions.
- Use data to inform strategy design – ensuring back-up power provision is sized to meet critical loads, and that businesscritical systems are energised ‘around the clock’ to avoid downtime. Factor in uninterrupted power requirements, and where automated back-up generation is required.
- Make the most of on-site generation and storage. Consider reconfiguring on-site generators, such as CHP, to operate independently of the grid. The use of battery storage technologies, which can provide energy in under a second, should also be considered.
