by Shane Henson — October 8, 2012—Losing power can be an inconvenience for any business—be it an hour or a minute—but for hospitals like Rush University Medical Center, a power outage that only lasts seconds can literally create a life-or-death situation. Highlighting the role that technology giant GE (General Electric) plays in providing secure and reliable emergency power to healthcare facilities worldwide, the company’s emergency critical power system is providing critical backup power to the 664-bed facility in Chicago, Illinois.
Complying with the 10-second restoration time mandated by the Illinois Department of Public Health and the city of Chicago, GE’s critical power system provides emergency and back-up power to the 13-building hospital from a central energy plant in 10 seconds or less.
This project brought technology together from GE’s Digital Energy and Industrial Solutions businesses, providing a complete end-to-end solution for Rush University Medical Center. GE’s multimode uninterruptible power supply (UPS) technology is designed to deliver uninterrupted power to Rush University Medical Center’s telecommunications systems in the East Tower Building, offering 99 percent efficiency in eBoost mode (eBoost is GE’s patented multimode operation that delivers energy efficiency up to 99 percent).
At the hospital, GE’s UPS system is a key feature of a new centralized energy plant that began operating at the nationally recognized teaching and research hospital in January 2012. Before the GE solution was installed, Rush University Medical Center’s potential time without power ranged from 14 to 16 seconds.
GE’s full scope of equipment supply includes:
- UPS
- Paralleling switchgear
- Programmable logic controller network
- Automatic transfer switches
- Surge protection devices
- Supervisor control and data acquisition system
- Medium voltage switchgear
- Protective relays
- Low-voltage switchgear
- Packaged substations
- Transformers
- Motor control centers
- Switchboards
