ELECTRIFICATION
Hospital bed with smart panel.
volatility cannot fly under the radar when hospital estates lay out their decarbonisation goals. National Grid’s Great Grid Upgrade is
underway, aiming to modernise the transmission network and expand its capacity to accommodate growing volumes of renewable energy from sources such as offshore wind. While these developments support long-term decarbonisation goals, they also increase the potential for temporary disruption to supply due to network alterations, commissioning delays, and maintenance activity tied to infrastructure upgrades. The issue of climate extremity has also
reared its head in recent years. In January 2025, Storm Eowyn knocked out power to Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Scotland. Some reports suggest that the back-up generator failed to start for 70 minutes. While patients were unharmed, the scenario could easily have proven catastrophic.
In the case of a sustained power outage at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth in November 2024, operations were cancelled, A&E was forced to shut, and phone systems failed, which left patients and staff unable to call each other. Some healthcare workers were also locked inside by malfunctioning doors. These risks are not theoretical.
According to our recent report, The Future of Healthcare is Open, every minute of a hospital power outage can already cost upwards of $7,900 once cancelled procedures and reputational damage are factored in. These cascading failures paint a picture of what energy fragility looks like, and why it needs urgent action from building managers and operators.
Why open protocol matters Hospital energy infrastructure has traditionally been developed in silos. Each vendor designs their own system and is contracted to install it. Incompatibilities across HVAC, lighting, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), switchgear, and diagnostics can over time create a dense and inflexible network that cannot adapt to change or failure elegantly. Hospitals around the world are
IFHE DIGEST 2026
Hospital nerve centre.
beginning to shift toward open protocol platforms, which are interoperable frameworks that allow multiple systems and vendors to communicate in real time. This connectivity means that if one system falters (say, HVAC) it does not take down another (such as diagnostic IT), and estate teams can fix problems based on real-time data. For example, Royal Preston Hospital in
Lancashire, which serves over 1.2 million people, has replaced fragmented BMS infrastructure with our ABB Cylon open protocol platform, unifying control of boilers, heating panels, and ventilation. By adding occupancy-based heating controls and remote access management, the hospital simultaneously improved resilience and significantly reduced energy waste. More importantly, this journey has not
required full replacement or disruptive rebuilds. Through a series of modular upgrades, the facility introduced future- ready systems into existing estates. This pathway is a crucial option for NHS Trusts where tight budgets and space constraints are the norm. Globally, other projects echo the same principle: that flexibility is key to preparedness. The case of Calvary Adelaide Hospital in Australia showcases similar open-specific retrofitting on a multi-storey, 57,000 m2 estate.
Blackouts and the bigger picture The far-reaching consequences of blackouts have been well observed of late. In April 2025, Europe’s largest blackout in decades – affecting Spain, Portugal and
In a digital-first era of healthcare, siloed and outdated systems are longer an option
parts of France – left hospitals without internal communications and out-of-order lifts. For healthcare staff, the power outage meant routine procedures quickly came to a halt as they shifted their focus to urgent medical needs. In early 2024, the UK government
released redacted planning guidance that presented its worst-case scenario planning for a National Power Outage. The document noted that during the first 48-72 hours of such a blackout, ‘no sites would be protected from power outages’ – not even critical NHS hospitals. Only upon activation of an Emergency Energy Code, which could take up to or more than three days, would top-priority assets be excluded from rolling cuts. This is the reality of our ability to
respond to power incidents in the UK: the most critical infrastructure will remain vulnerable in the early stages of a national supply shock. In this context, local-level resilience is the last safeguard between life support and life loss.
Facility design.
Smart power is not just for emergencies Energy resilience is often framed through a disaster-prevention lens, but it is much more than that. Fuller integration of open protocol systems and smart monitoring digitally transforms an estate’s energy use from passive consumption to active optimisation. l Condition-based maintenance: Helsinki University Hospital in Finland deployed IoT sensors to monitor temperature and vibration across components within its scattered power infrastructure. By identifying abnormalities in advance of failure occurring, the system has reduced
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