Distributed Energy Resources, Energy Efficiency, GHG Emissions  -  December 6, 2018

Partners HealthCare adds fuel cell system

Partners HealthCare, an integrated health system founded by Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, will deploy 4.1 megawatts of fuel cell-based energy systems at locations throughout Massachusetts.

The systems, to be installed by Bloom Energy, are expected to boost readiness for potential winter storms. A statement from Bloom Energy noted, “Massachusetts suffered more than 100 outages to its electric power grid in 2017, lasting 55 hours in total, according to the Eaton Blackout Tracker.” More than one-third of these outages were caused by bad weather and falling trees.

The Bloom Energy Servers can be configured to enable critical operations to continue even if the electrical grid fails in the event of a storm or an accidental outage. The statement said, “They will provide cheaper electricity 24 hours per day, seven days per week, thereby more than paying for themselves, helping Partners keep its electricity cost low and predictable over a 15-year period.” The Servers are also expected to reduce CO2 emissions by more than 20% relative to the average for local grid power.

Partners will deploy the new systems at its corporate headquarters in Somerville, Mass., as well as at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, North Shore Medical Center, and at its Marlborough data center.

 “Our hospitals and medical centers care for more than 1.5 million patients each year. Many of our facilities are open 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, so reliable electricity is both crucial to our operations, and one of our largest utility costs,” said Dennis Villanueva, senior manager of energy & sustainability at Partners.  “With the Bloom systems, we can save money, improve our resiliency to outages, and virtually eliminate particulate pollutants, responsible for cardiovascular, and respiratory diseases in our community.”

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