Oswego Hospital in upstate New York is celebrating its 125 th anniversary this year by opening a new intensive care unit and maternity department as part of a $34 million renewal and expansion project. Last November, the hospital unveiled the first phase, a new state-of-the-art surgery center featuring seven operating rooms.

Although the 30,000 square foot addition is attracting the most attention, plenty of other improvements have been made throughout the hospital. One of the most important behind-the-scenes enhancements is a significant upgrade and expansion of the facility’s standby power system.

“During the planning stage, we realized that our single 750 kilowatt generator would be unable to provide sufficient power to the existing facility plus the new addition,” says John Bucher, Oswego Hospital’s facilities director. “Our consideration of various alternatives led to the purchase of a Generac Modular Power System consisting of three 600 kilowatt diesel generators that can operate individually or in parallel. The modular configuration is very cost effective and provides the additional advantages of redundancy and flexibility for future expansion. We constructed a new building to house the three gensets, with room to add a fourth if it’s ever needed.”

In configuring the system to its needs, Oswego staff consulted with representatives from Stantec, a professional design and consulting firm, and R.L. Kistler, the local Generac Power Systems industrial dealer. The remote generator building has a digital monitoring system connected to the generators, emergency switchboard, main service switchgear and over 30 bypass isolation transfer switches.

“The electrical loads are prioritized and divided among the transfer switches, with the life safety loads having highest priority,” explains John Bailey, electrical sales engineer for R.L. Kistler. “All the generators support those loads first with redundant coverage. After the critical load is protected in that manner, power is transferred to the secondary and tertiary loads. If a generator is shut down for any reason, the non-critical loads are automatically shed first as needed to maintain redundancy on the critical life safety circuits.”

The new system gives Oswego Hospital greater flexibility and better coverage, according to John Bucher. “Our facility will be 100 percent operational every day of the year. During the winter, we’re fully protected against the snow, ice and windstorms that are common in this area. If a summer outage occurs like in August of 2003, we can not only support critical care but also keep the buildings comfortable for everyone.”