Abstract
In California, Bloom Energy completed two rapid-deployment fuel cell microgrid projects in early April to support patients affected by Covid-19. Bloom Energy Servers provide electricity with almost zero particulate emissions, ensuring that Covid-19 patients with severe respiratory issues can breathe clean air. The crisis has overwhelmed existing hospitals, necessitating the deployment of secondary locations to treat patients, and these new locations need reliable power.
At the Vallejo site of a national hospital system, Bloom deployed a solid oxide fuel cell based microgrid capable of powering a temporary field hospital in the main hospital's parking lot to accommodate patient overflow, if needed. Bloom already has 1.2 MW of Energy Servers powering the main hospital, and was able to leverage its on-the-ground capabilities to install the microgrid in only three days – five days ahead of schedule. The compact microgrid – occupying only three parking spaces – is almost vibration-free and quiet, eliminating the potential for damaging sensitive medical equipment and disruption to the local community.
‘Our modular Energy Servers were designed with ‘quick time to power’ as an important value proposition. We advanced our rapid deploy microgrid offering greatly after the Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events last year to help customers affected by the wildfire related power outages in California [FCB, February 2020, p7],’ says KR Sridhar, the firm's founder, chairman and CEO. ‘In the future we will be able to use this solution for other rapid deploy scenarios for emergency management.’
The State of California called on Bloom to rapidly deploy a primary power energy solution at Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento, the former home of the Sacramento Kings basketball team, where the system will support a field hospital assembled to treat overflow Covid-19 patients. Bloom took only two weeks to install a 400 kW SOFC microgrid to power a training facility onsite that will hold some 100 hospital beds.
Bloom also hit the headlines with its work to refurbish out-of-service ventilators, at the behest of California Governor Gavin Newsom. In just over three weeks, the company refurbished more than 1200 ventilators at its Sunnyvale, California and Newark, Delaware facilities, which were provided to the states of California, Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Bloom Energy: www.bloomenergy.com