Minimizing the Burden on New Jersey’s Electrical Grid

A/Z Corporation

Just over a decade ago, Superstorm Sandy swept through the Northeast, devastating the region and leaving more than 8 million without power, some for more than a week. In response to Superstorm Sandy and anticipation of possible future weather events, New Jersey partnered with the federal government to launch the state’s first Energy Resilience Bank (ERB) in 2014, to focus on the condition and resilience of New Jersey’s energy infrastructure.

Leveraging the ERB program, RWJBarnabas Health, one of the largest healthcare networks in New Jersey, began exploring an electrical upgrade, implementing a 1.5 MW combined cooling and heat and power (CCHP) facility at the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Somerset. The primary power generator uses natural gas to help reduce the burden on the state’s electrical grid, which will help minimize the impacts of future major power outages.

A/Z is providing oversight on the system design review and requirements. The components required for the project include:

• CHP equipment, main breaker, and protective relays.

• ATS switches and power monitoring.

• Unit substations.

• Incorporating battery energy storage system (BESS).

“One of our biggest challenges is that our project site is also an active hospital that has to remain operating throughout construction,” says Steve Williams, Operations Manager for the Mid-Atlantic Region. “We are coordinating with hospital staff to ensure we are on the same page, and it will also involve a lot of off-hours work. Additionally, many of the hospital’s systems are older, and we will have to retrofit equipment to fit those old systems.”

Then, there’s the logistics of getting the equipment into the facility, as the generators and other equipment often are too large to fit through the facility’s entrances. The team has had to get crafty, finding and sometimes creating ways to transport some items to their intended destination within the hospital.

“Overall, the team has come together and is performing well on this job,” adds Williams. The team is doing so well, in fact, that it has lined up additional CCHP work at other RWJBarnabas Health sites as they work toward substantial completion on the UHS campus later this year.