Commercial Building Products - May 2015 - 50

PROJECT

building technology
Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital,
St. Louis Park, MN, has 426 beds,
more than 3,200 employees, and
about 950 staff physicians.

Critical-Power Nightmares Erased
Power-management system takes hassle out of testing and
automates compliance reporting.

I

t's a nightmare that facility operations teams dread.

ple, required transferring one automatic-transfer switch

continuity and emergency preparedness, solving the

They are three and a half hours into a four-hour man-

at a time from utility to emergency sources.

problem of making decisions based on too little data,

datory test of a critical-power system when the moni-

toring-and-control system freezes. Real load falls below

and doing more as budgets shrink.
THE WAITING GAME
SATISFYING THE MUST HAVES

the required 30%. The team takes control manually and

"We would wait and wait. And wait," said Bill Tester,

works through a time-consuming reboot. Their only re-

facilities manager. Getting all the hospital's 34 automat-

To say the team had a critical eye when they evaluated

course: reschedule the entire test.

ic-transfer switches on line took 15 to 20 min. The oper-

a new critical-power-management system is a bit of an

ations team scheduled an hour on a Wednesday evening

understatement. Their list of must haves for a new sys-

each month from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. for testing.

tem included a proven track record of managing critical

Seared into the team's memory, the experience is
one example of a power-monitoring and control system

"The team would hope to complete it in an hour, but

that is past its prime.

power for a multi-building campus, thus providing true,
interconnected facility management.

"Its operational deficiencies included logging itself

often couldn't because of rebooting," Liedman ex-

off, 'losing' a group of automatic-transfer switches from

plained. The process took so long they had to reconfig-

Not surprisingly, other must haves were the ability to

its database, and operating very slowly due to its serial

ure time delays or manually transfer each of the 34

better manage multiple automatic-transfer switches, the

communications," said Chris Liedman, operations

transfer switches one at a time-twice.

speed to quickly manage the volumes of data generated

manager of engineering and maintenance at Park Nicol-

"It was a very big hassle to conduct monthly tests,"
Liedman said. "And four-hour tests became nearly im-

let Methodist Hospital, St. Louis Park, MN.
The 426-bed hospital, with more than 3,200 employ-

possible with the system."

during tests, and automatically producing compliance
reports.
Technically, system performance would need to in-

ees and about 950 staff physicians, is part of HealthPart-

That's when the operations team decided to bring its

clude distributed processing, prioritized and dynamic

ners, the nation's largest, consumer-governed, nonprofit

critical-power-management process into the digital rev-

data updating, dynamic throttling, diagnostic logging,

integrated healthcare and financing organization.

olution with the help of Emerson Network Power's

and 1,000-Mbps Ethernet. In fact, the system needed to

HealthPartners serves more than 1.4 million medical

ASCO Power business, Columbus, OH. The revolution

be able to monitor a range of critical-power equipment

and dental members and about a million patients, pri-

is combining advanced electronics and wireless technol-

and components, such as automatic-transfer switches,

marily in Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

ogies in ways that are changing facilities management.

paralleling control switchgear, gen-sets, multiple brands

Although recognized for its patient care, its testing

It's helping manage the increasing complexity of

of critical power was an issue. Monthly tests, for exam-

buildings, enhancing their efficiency, ensuring business

52

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MAY 2015

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