Reliable power supply is essential for the smooth operation of hospitals, particularly for services that need to run continuously such as operating theatres, intensive care units and fire detection systems. As a leader in safe, smart and sustainable electrification, ABB is equipping Clinique Saint-Jean l’Ermitage (CSJE), an ultramodern private hospital in Melun, France, with reliable and efficient power supply solutions. CSJE is part of the Santépôle health campus, France’s largest public-private partnership in healthcare, making this benchmark project particularly challenging.
Q&A with experts from stakeholder interviews about the Clinique Saint-Jean l’Ermitage
Dr Philippe Cosson, Chairman, CEO, and osteoarticular surgeon at CSJE:
Electrical energy is vital to our healthcare institutes. Our facilities should be absolutely reliable to ensure that our wards can continuously operate, especially our operating theatres, radiotherapy service and fire-detection systems. By building modern facilities, we also wanted to optimize our energy consumption. And for CSJE, this is also about meeting the HQE standard for green buildings.
Q: Why did you choose ABB’s solutions?
Our project management support firm, ISMS, is vastly experienced in building health facilities. They advised us throughout the building operations and helped us choose our partners, including for the technical work packages. We’re really pleased with the solutions we decided on.
Q: What do you expect from ABB in terms of optimizing your hospital’s energy consumption in the future?
I don’t have the technical skills to fully grasp the way such projects will take shape. But it seems clear to me that by digitizing health facilities, the energy costs of running them can be optimized directly. Technical management of the building should also be optimized to support our desire to have a building that consumes less energy for greater efficiency and more respect for the environment.
Jean-Marie Challot, Agencies Director at Artelia Bâtiments Privés de Santé, and Patrick Buquet, assignment supervisor and engineer in charge of this project:
Q: What challenges were there in terms of energy management?
It was a complex project for a health center with the particularity of bringing together a public facility and a private facility. The ARS, the regional body for public health, put forward the idea of a shared site for these two hospitals, with energy production pooled for the pair. In the design, a substation was linked to the urban network for heating, inside a power block next to the public hospital, shared with the private hospital. In addition to this power block, a backup was introduced with a gas boiler. The same pooling of energy production can be seen in the electric power station. The power block houses the inlets from the French utility EDF and the backup generators, which supply both the public hospital and the private hospital. The same reflections took place regarding production of medical fluids. One of this project’s difficulties was in the different ways the two hospitals were dealt with. On the one hand, we had a planned private hospital with standard project implementation and talks with firms over a short period. And on the other hand, was assistance for a public hospital in the design and production phase over a longer period. For us, the challenge was finding the right compromise in researching possible uses of the power block.
Q: How would you say the project went?
The project went really well because, beyond client satisfaction, we got the HQE certification for green buildings. This shows we fully applied our strategy for equipment and energy-consumption tracking. In the project, we had two major technical work packages (electricity and HVAC engineering). We opted for ABB’s equipment for the distribution boards to make sure the equipment continuously operated properly, and to ensure we could enjoy good support and maintenance from ABB as the fitter. Although the handover came with a few difficulties at the end of the project, the building perfectly meets medical and technical needs in the way it is organized and runs.
Bruno Di Donato, sales engineer at ABB
Q: What systems and solutions were introduced?
In this project, we put forward solutions in electric power, from high-voltage to low-voltage. Our proposal concerned medium-voltage switchgear, transformers, low-voltage equipment for distribution boards, and emergency lighting luminaires and systems.
Q: What are the strengths of ABB systems used in the private hospital?
ABB is a recognized global player in industry. The main strength of our products is that they perfectly meet the demands and high standards of this kind of site. All our solutions comply with standards in force. We have at our disposal all means of production required and we perform tests on our products to carry out such projects successfully. Furthermore, ABB has all tools needed for training operators to use our installations. Lastly, we track obsolescence among our products. In this way, we can easily warn the client and spot future needs.
Q: How can a facility go on optimizing its energy consumption?
You can go further in this field by upgrading these installations via related products designed to improve overall energy consumption. Today, digitization helps us collect measurements and data remotely, on ABB’s cloud-based platforms, or makes them available to a local supervisor. What’s more, the equipment installed for the distribution boards can be easily upgraded, at least via software or by adding accessories. Its on-site performance is helped with maximum availability of the installation and the benefits of ABB Ability™ Energy and Asset Manager.
