The recent power outage in Spain and Portugal made me think about this. Do they have backups exclusive to hospitals? But how is that possible if the entire country has no electricity?
The recent power outage in Spain and Portugal made me think about this. Do they have backups exclusive to hospitals? But how is that possible if the entire country has no electricity?
Comments
Hospitals have backup generators.
I think most hospitals have a backup generator that can run for a certain amount of time. The generator would run on gas
Hospitals have backup generators that run on diesel or natural gas
Hospitals have back up generators. Next time you’re in a hospital room look at the plugs, if they have a red plate, it means it will run off the generators.
They’ll have on-site generators and presumably enough fuel to run them for a few days or so.
Provided the backup generators last through the outage, nothing. If they don’t, they die.
Hospitals usually have a backup generator with enough fuel to provide emergency power to essential equipment to cover this sort of thing.
If they get really desperate, they will do their best to keep people alive with manually operated equipment, and evacuating patients to another location. There is usually some redundancy in those backups, but even that only goes so far.
In the US Hospitals have emergency generators.
At least in the US, hospitals are required to gave back up generation.
hospital generators run on diesel (some battery powered, but don’t last long)
what’s interesting is that gas station pumps quit working there, so ya better have that fuel supply ready to go
fun fact – they just switched to fully renewable — very dependable………………or not ready for prime time depending on how you define ‘dependable’
Backup generators that probably haven’t been tested in a while just like Heathrow.
Former power company guy here from Florida. First, most (if not all in our area) hospitals have back generation. Second, when circuits start going back up, hospitals (and some other select circuits like water lift stations) are the very first thing on the work list.
The bigger problem tended to be with people who require power at home. There are a LOT of people in their homes who require life-maintaining electrical equipment. We would always try to work with them well ahead of storm season to ensure they had battery back ups, small generators, manual systems, whatever they could afford.
As many people have already answered: backup generators. I cannot talk about hospitals further, but I can tell you about datacenters (which probably have similar systems).
The datacenter I visited had: Connection to two independent high voltage power lines, a battery room which is needed to bridge the ~2minute gap until the diesel generators are started, warm and can generate the full power needed. Batteries would last 24 hours if diesel engines would not start. And then the generators themselves. At least two, each of them capable of supplying the place alone. Each of those systems get tested at least once a year.
While hospitals have backup generators, they also have fuel supply on site to run those generators. However this is usually for a limited period and only covers the most common case: i.e. the grid going offline for a few hours.
In cases where the outage lasts more then a few hours, e.g. major earthquake, the government has diesel fuel storage at strategic spots. Airports & Hospitals get the first dibs on this supply. If worse comes to worse, you’ll see people scouring Hospital car park and siphoning diesel out of cars.
The town I grew up in the Hospital had a direct line to the power substation and the power was always restored very quickly, along with backup generators
In my country the main hospital has diesel generators that start immediately if there is an outage.
Hospitals plan for events like this. They have backup generators. You see it in movies and tv shows all the time.
But if we assume it doesnt work and powers out everywhere and the hospital loses power for an extended period of time, people do be dead, but hospitals aim to avoid this so that’s why they got backup generators.
All life sustaining devices and critical equipment will have battery backups in them. For example and anesthesia carts battery back up should last at least an hour. Typically 1.5-2 hrs is what I have seen. If it doesn’t then batteries should be changed. Same with ventilators. Patient monitoring equipment should have about 15-30 minutes. But thats cause the batteries are smaller. Even patient beds have batteries in them just in case you need to raise or lower to get a patient out of it to a mechanical stretcher or bed.
You would be surprised how many batteries a hospital goes through in a given year just on the equipment.
During the big east coast black out in the early 2000’s our volunteer fire/ems dept was dispatched to the blythedale children’s hospital(rehab mostly) and helped provide manual ventilation (bag valve masks) and oxygen for a period while a generator that failed was serviced. Their staff was also doing this but the number of kids on ventilators was way greater than the staff present to do it
Hospitals have their own backup power generators.
The backup generators kick in. If the grid doesn’t come up soon enough, though, they’ll die because hospitals are notoriously bad about maintenance and upkeep when it comes to backup generators. When the gennys die, people on life support will start dropping off. I believe there are ways to manually make up for the machines, but there just aren’t enough employees to keep that up for very long.
Nearest hospitals to me are close to hydroelectric dams and have generators. The hospital has phone numbers to get fuel quickly. So do the police and fire department.
Ever go into a hospital and see some of the plugs in the walls are red? That indicates that is a plug that is connected to a generator if the power were to go out.
The hospital where I worked had a generator that would energize a small town. The patient rooms had outlets with red covers. These were the ones powered by the generator. You just had to make sure the life support equipment was plugged into the red.
in the US, some facilities have red outlets, these are connected to immediate power sources should these things happen, generators are another (option).
Hospitals have designated plug points in each room with generator backup. Critical stuff like vents have to plugged into those points. A lot of machines have a small amount of battery backup as well so they give you a little time to plug into those points if the power fails.
I used to work at a prison that lost power for a month and was all on generators if a prison can do it so can a hospital
There’s an old radiolab episode called “playing god” that is all about exactly this issue.
Got to the point where they had to decide which patients got the limited number of batteries to maintain the life critical systems.
Hospitals have back up generators, sometimes they can hold multiple days worth of fuel if not tied into the natural gas system. Depending on the medical devices involved some have battery capacity for a few hours. There’s typically plans to get fuel delivered to hospitals in emergency situations.
When they restart the grid certain things get priority, hospitals are a priority.
Most hospitals have what in some places is called a UPS – Uninterruptable Power Supply, which is exactly as it sounds. The moment that power is lost, it comes on.
Each set up is unique, naturally, but in general the initial start up will be some form of battery-capacity – it has the fastest start up at light-speed and will keep the most critical systems on without anything much more than a flick. These would be for things like the NICU, Intensive care, people on life support, operation rooms, fire suppression systems and emergency lighting. The battery will give the hospitals enough time to turn on their back-up generator, which is often powered by fuel of one sort or another. That generator will take over from the battery once it’s up and running.
According to nfpa 70 and nfpa 101 hospitals are required to have a backup source of power and generators. So they would have backup generators for the life safety system.
The US is a very large country, about the size of Western Europe, and is unlikely to have a power outage across the entire country. There is an Eastern and Western power grid, and Texas has it’s own. They are all interconnected but operate separately for the most part. Within the Eastern and Western grid are systems or hundreds of more local grids that are interconnected. That makes it hard for any outside event to bring then all down simultaneously.
As someone who managed parts of the main hospital campus for NYU Langone Medical Center, I can tell you that most of the comments here are true. There are several backup generators that automatically turn on in the event of an interruption to normal power. The hospital tests the generators weekly, monthly, etc. to ensure they are working properly.
You might ask yourself what happens in the few seconds between losing utility power and having the generators turn on and the answer to that is something called an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). It’s basically a series of large batteries and power conditioners that ensure the power going to critical pieces of equipment is both constant and at the correct voltage.
There are a million other details I can share if you have any questions or want to know more.
Doctor here. Generators kick in. If they dont then there’s O2 and ambu bags. Drips can be controlled with math and micro drips. Isn’t fun but its doable.
I worked in backup power systems for awhile. We had 3 types of customers. Casinos, Data Centers, and Hospitals.