Generators to support major operations

[ultrarunner]

For years I would load test our Hospital Emergency Power Generator weekly.

About 7 years ago I was informed that new air management regulations limited testing to once every other week...

Note... this generator was state of the art in 1995... so the regs went into effect on a 10 year old unit with less than 300 total hours.

Environmental Regs now trump many other regs and established standards of care.

 

[newbury]

For years I would load test our Hospital Emergency Power Generator weekly.

About 7 years ago I was informed that new air management regulations limited testing to once every other week...

Note... this generator was state of the art in 1995... so the regs went into effect on a 10 year old unit with less than 300 total hours.

Environmental Regs now trump many other regs and established standards of care.

And how many times did your tests "fail"?

I've a 10 year old gennie 6KW? I test about once every two months. A couple of times I needed ether. I know people that change their oil every 3,000 miles. Doesn't mean it needs to be done.

How much did that change to testing every other week affect reliability?

From the article the baby was born in the brief time between the power outage and the generators kicking on

Although Rouge Valley Ajax and Pickering hospital, like all Canadian hospitals, is equipped with a backup generator, hospital officials said that Pearson was born in a narrow time frame in which generator power had not quite clicked on in the maternity ward.
典he backup generator did work as it should; but there was a part of the hospital a small part that was without light for a very brief period of time, said Mr. Brazeau. 展ell, that痴 the time that the baby decided to be born.

So that reads like a headline based on a unique occurrence. And the faremr was trying to be cheap.

 

[3930dave]

"More chaos greeted them at the hospital. A traffic jam of ambulances were crowded outside the emergency room and without electricity, hospital staff were required to manually force open the heavy sliding doors at the entrance."

Nobody was standing there with a stopwatch, but it sounds like the generators were down for longer than any of us would find acceptable, at a first-world hospital. In fact, that was the comment (in the TO Star) from the father - he's orignally from Cameroon. He made the comment in a polite manner, but I agree that he has a good point - that's part of why I started this thread.

Mother and baby are doing fine, from the sounds of it, and kids have been/will be born in much worse environments.

Maybe it's the dreamer in me (or just that it's Christmas Day - happy turkey time everyone !), but I'd like to think that IF a hospital had to deal with a Federal department it would be concerning minimum maintenance standards, not maximum caps.

Maintenance vs. over-maintenance..... that debate, in general, will be spinning for a long time. In terms of hospitals, I side with over-maintenance. As an example, the general support batteries on crash-carts get changed out at something like 1/2 of their rated lifespan - OK by me, and obviously anybody who ends up hooked up to a crash cart won't argue with that practice. Would I like to see this practice disrupted by federal "Buying Too Many Lead Batteries" (I shouldn't even jest about this....) legislation..... definitely not.

Having multiple generator options in a large scale operation is only prudent. Some good examples in this thread, and also in the "Your last generator maintenance run" thread I started. Mostly, these capable and redundant generator systems were put in place, and well maintained, on privately owned farms and homes.

I expect a really high standard of emergency power at a hospital. I hope some lessons are learned from this incident, and appropriate (and fully funded, going forward) corrections are put in place.

That's all I want for Christmas (as I still have my 2 front teeth !). :thumbsup:

Enjoy the day, one and all. :cool2:

Rgds, D.

 

[buickanddeere]

I had dealings years ago with the A&P, Ajax Pickering hospital. I can't get into particulars but the administrators were blindly reading the procedures without any grasp of the actual meanings or intent. We went in assisted, cleaned up and left while ignoring the panicked prattling paper pushers. The two ER nurses involved were outstanding, professional, calm and had common sense.
There is a real possibility explaining the need for equipment service and testing would be similarly received.

 

[doxford jim]

Seems like the hospital has been negligent in ensuring adequate power service in the event of an outside electrical failure.
As a retired Marine Engineer, the ships emergency generator (s) were tested regularly on a monthly basis - as was the emergency air compressors.

I currentlylive on 150 acres and our house has a 12kW diesel back up generator that is test run monthly and has been a real godsend when we have have had power outages. I also have a 5kw and a 1kw portable generators that can be used around the property at any time. We also have a back up heating system (propane) to augment out heat pump system in the event of failure or problems.

It really doesn't take much common sense to get organized properly and I think both the farmer and the hospital need some "real education" into what happens in life.

Giving birth by a flashlight is not life threatening in itself - just the media sensationlizing everything as usual. Pity they didn't write about how the farmer and hopsital should have their act together or hire real profesionals. The word stupidity comes to mind and adequately describes the situation.

I could go on and on about incompetence, management arrogance , self inflated importance etc. , but it would not serve any useful purpose. Suffice to say that the farmer and the hospital need to do much better in providing the essential electrical services for themselves.

Thanks

 

[dmccarty]

It is odd that the hospital generators did not immediately power up certain circuits. It is one thing to test the generator on a schedule but how often do organizations tests the circuits powered by the generators? That is more difficult to do if the building is in use 24x7x365. At one of my jobs, part of the building has TWO huge back up generators connected to a huge fuel storage tank. The tank is larger than a semi trailer load of fuel. The gensets are run once a week and I would guess checked by a technician once a month.

The floors that are powered by the gensets are tested annually to make sure that the emergency power off(EPO) buttons work. This requires quite a bit of work since the floors in question have thousands and thousands of computers that have to be shut down prior to the EPO test. One year the EPO was pushed but, oops, certain circuits were still LIVE. :shocked: The whole point of the EPO is to drop power in an emergency so having live circuits could literally get someone killed. The EPO was pushed by mistake and not as part of a test. :shocked: Some idiots doing inspections pushed an EPO button when going through a door. The twits thought the EPO was a handicap door opening button so they pushed it because they were too lazy to open the door themselves. This dropped the power on two floors which also turned off thousands and thousands of computers. :shocked: What was worse, was that SOME systems did NOT power off.

This turned out to be a good thing since the live circuits were found. I was in the lab when this happened. I had just gotten to work and walked buy a group of electricians working under the raised floor. When I had walked by them, I had stopped and joked with them about being careful and not disconnecting power or networks. :laughing: A few minutes later the power dropped. :shocked: Oh Scat! I RAN over to the electricians to check on them since I figured they had gotten into trouble. They were standing there with a shocked, pun intended, look on their faces wondering what had happened. :laughing::laughing::laughing: They saw me and said they did not drop the power. :confused3: The guys who run the lab were out running around trying to figure out what happened as well. At first we thought someone had gotten in trouble but we eventually found the two twits that hit the button.

This is when it was noticed that some circuits were powered up. :shocked:

I remember back in the 80's a contractor at American Express was walking out of the server room, and hit the EPO button to open the door. He dropped the power and took out the American Express system covering a large portion of the US.

Anywho, it is possible that the hospital had never checked to see which circuits were on the generators.

I don't see how a livestock operation does not have generators on hand. My county used to have a decent size poultry economy which has died. The poultry farms I saw had generator backups since if they lost power in cold or heat they could loose their flocks which would have ripple effects from the farm to consumer. I would be shocked if the pig operations down east do not have back up power.

Later,
Dan

 

[3930dave]

Technical people often view any system in these main stages:

1) Design.

2) Build.

3) Maintain and Sustain.

There is a Cost to all of those stages. Both in terms of executing each stage, and also not fully executing each stage.

Top-level bureacrats are mostly paid to minimize cost. So long as they are perceived as doing a good job of cost reduction by the hospital board, their large paycheque keeps flowing.

It takes a really smart (esp. politcally smart) technical manager to educate the powers-that-be on the issue of not fully executing each Design/Build/Maintain and Sustain stage properly.

Top level bureaucrats are usually well insulated from any personal consequences. Often, if any significant mountain of _____ hits the fan, they just pull the rip-cord on their golden parachute, and land in Belize. A common reality today, but not how most of us want to view hospital "leadership".

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

It is odd that the hospital generators did not immediately power up certain circuits. It is one thing to test the generator on a schedule but how often do organizations tests the circuits powered by the generators? That is more difficult to do if the building is in use 24x7x365. At one of my jobs, part of the building has TWO huge back up generators connected to a huge fuel storage tank. The tank is larger than a semi trailer load of fuel. The gensets are run once a week and I would guess checked by a technician once a month.

The floors that are powered by the gensets are tested annually to make sure that the emergency power off(EPO) buttons work. This requires quite a bit of work since the floors in question have thousands and thousands of computers that have to be shut down prior to the EPO test. One year the EPO was pushed but, oops, certain circuits were still LIVE. :shocked: The whole point of the EPO is to drop power in an emergency so having live circuits could literally get someone killed. The EPO was pushed by mistake and not as part of a test. :shocked: Some idiots doing inspections pushed an EPO button when going through a door. The twits thought the EPO was a handicap door opening button so they pushed it because they were too lazy to open the door themselves. This dropped the power on two floors which also turned off thousands and thousands of computers. :shocked: What was worse, was that SOME systems did NOT power off.

This turned out to be a good thing since the live circuits were found. I was in the lab when this happened. I had just gotten to work and walked buy a group of electricians working under the raised floor. When I had walked by them, I had stopped and joked with them about being careful and not disconnecting power or networks. :laughing: A few minutes later the power dropped. :shocked: Oh Scat! I RAN over to the electricians to check on them since I figured they had gotten into trouble. They were standing there with a shocked, pun intended, look on their faces wondering what had happened. :laughing::laughing::laughing: They saw me and said they did not drop the power. :confused3: The guys who run the lab were out running around trying to figure out what happened as well. At first we thought someone had gotten in trouble but we eventually found the two twits that hit the button.

This is when it was noticed that some circuits were powered up. :shocked:

I remember back in the 80's a contractor at American Express was walking out of the server room, and hit the EPO button to open the door. He dropped the power and took out the American Express system covering a large portion of the US.

Anywho, it is possible that the hospital had never checked to see which circuits were on the generators.

I don't see how a livestock operation does not have generators on hand. My county used to have a decent size poultry economy which has died. The poultry farms I saw had generator backups since if they lost power in cold or heat they could loose their flocks which would have ripple effects from the farm to consumer. I would be shocked if the pig operations down east do not have back up power.

Later,
Dan

Great example Dan.

IMO, nothing beats a real dynamic test. "Hold my coffee, and watch this !". :thumbsup:

You get a meaningful test of the system, but also value from the human end - the right people become more familiar with critical system operations, and in your case, learned that the system was not Built as intended. Critical information indeed.

Rgds, D.

 

[farmer2009]

The farmer may have had a generator. But was complaining about the cost of operation. Since he said they were dragging their feet. I have seen that a power company knows a livestock operation has a gen set and they go build someone else's power back espesially in winter. I know my 80kw generator likes about 50 gallons of deisel a day. At today's prices that's around $175 a day. Tends to take the profit out of those days. Now amagine running a month or longer like that. Even 500 hour services don't take long to get to at 24 hours a day.

My generator starts every week under load the switch gear changes and runs a load or 15 min then cools down for 20 min. When doing this the lights only blink if there is a large power load as the controllers supply power to the fans and heaters first. In the event of an outage it takes about 10 seconds to bring fans back online. And about 15 seconds to get lights. Switch gear has a 5 second delay before starting generator then has to reboot all computers. My point is babies shouldn't be delivered in the dark as that is too long for an auto system to switch.

 

[Scooby074]

Every commercial farmer I know has a genset of appropriate size to run most of the farm including the parlor.

As to the hospital, it sounds like power eventually came up on the maternity floor."典he backup generator did work as it should; but there was a part of the hospital a small part that was without light for a very brief period of time".

Of course there have to be priorities in a hospital and you cant really shunt the whole building over to generator in an instant.

Priority would be operating rooms, intensive care, emergency... etc then on down the line to the cafeteria at the lower end.

Sounds like the system worked as designed and this is just some media spin.