Electricity is only of third-rate interest to hospitals. Their core business is the welfare of its patients, for which medical appliances are required, which, on their turn, require electricity. That said, electricity is a vital utility and any malfunction or interruption can easily lead to disastrous consequences. This combination – being absolutely vital but far from the main interest domain of the organization – entails a certain risk.

Standards and regulations prescribe how a hospitals’ electrical installations should be conceived to ensure safety and reliability. Those regulations are complemented by the prescriptions of the equipment manufacturers. All these rules, however, create a complex tangle for the user, making it difficult to figure out which rule has to be applied where and how exactly it has to be implemented. In this tutorial, we will try to shed light on those regulations and give a comprehensive overview.

Once safety and reliability are taken care of, the focus can shift to energy efficiency. The fact that efficiency is only of secondary priority for a hospitals’ electrical installation does not mean its impact cannot be significant. By focusing on energy efficiency, hospitals can often make surprisingly large savings on the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their installations. In this paper, we will tackle a few major energy efficiency topics relevant to medical building management.

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