FEATURE
NURSING IRELAND’S ELECTRICITY GRID
Private hospital group, UPMC Sport Surgery Clinic, has partnered with Enel X to make its backup generator available for demand and frequency response services. Twelve years in, this energy flexibility programme runs invisibly alongside clinical operations, keeping the generator exercised and healthy while releasing revenue and contributing to grid stability.
The customer UPMC Sport Surgery Clinic is a private orthopaedic hospital and sports medicine centre in Santry, Dublin. Established in 2007 by a group of surgeons and investors, the clinic was conceived to address a specific gap: young athletes in the public system who needed surgery but couldn't access a theatre.
Since then, the facility has grown significantly, both in scale and patient type. From four orthopaedic theatres, one MRI scanner and 38 inpatient beds, it now operates seven ultra-clean-air theatres, three MRI scanners, 29 consulting suites and a dedicated off-site sports medicine facility. In March 2023 the clinic was acquired by University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). A further expansion, adding two more theatres, is scheduled to complete in January 2028.
The challenge As an accredited private hospital, UPMC Sport Surgery Clinic must meet rigorous standards for operational continuity. The clinic holds Joint Commission International (JCI) accreditation – the gold standard for healthcare provision – which governs its policies and procedures across all aspects of facility management, including backup power.
Critical systems that must remain uninterrupted include medical equipment and lighting in the operating theatres, ventilation for patients under anaesthetic, patient monitoring in recovery, and IT infrastructure. The hospital is served by a ring main providing two independent supply lines, with a full-load 1,250 kilovolt-ampere (kVA) backup generator, and UPS systems providing approximately 30 minutes of autonomy in critical zones.
Prior to working with Enel X, testing the backup generator required the facilities team to schedule a dedicated visit on a Sunday morning, take the hospital off grid and run a full-load test manually. This was a disruptive and time- consuming exercise – and hence infrequent.
In 2014 a representative from Enel X approached the clinic's Medical Facilities and Project Manager with a demand-response proposal. The reply was blunt: without a synchronised generator, the risk to clinical operations was simply too great and energy flexibility was a non-starter.
What is demand response?
Demand response is a mechanism through which electricity users are paid to adjust their consumption, or make generation capacity available, during periods when the grid is under stress, helping balance supply and demand. In Ireland, these services are coordinated through the electricity market operator, EirGrid.
By supporting grid stability, demand response is a natural fit for critical infrastructure sectors such as healthcare, pharmacology and data centres, the resilience of which depends on grid infrastructure. For facilities with backup generation, participation can be as simple as making the generator available to run on request. The site temporarily switches from grid power to its own generation, freeing up capacity on the network. With a synchronised generator, the transition is seamless with no interruption to supply.
The solution Enel X offered to fund the installation of G10 synchronisation relays that would enable the hospital's generator to switch between grid and off-grid power without any interruption. This removed the clinical risk entirely. With UPS systems covering the critical zones during the brief synchronisation window, no area of the hospital would be adversely affected.
34 | TOMORROW’S FM
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