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Remote Monitoring Key to Texas Children’s Hospital Installation

Just as the ability to monitor vital signs of a critically ill patient at the nurse’s station is crucial to good health care, so is the remote monitoring of the vital signs of the hospital’s physical plant. That’s one of the main reasons the new 20-story S-Lot facility being built for Houston’s Texas Children’s Hospital will use three Caterpillar 3512B generator sets for standby power.

Mustang Power Systems is supplying the three units, which feature Caterpillar’s Advanced Diesel Engine Management (ADEM II). With programmable relay control modules and modular add-on electronic devices, well over 100 engine parameters can be monitored with ADEM II. Because this information is on a data link, it can be transported, with an RS485 cable, over considerable distances to remote control centers. There Caterpillar software converts the data to a format compatible for extraction, providing more data than is available at the generator control panel.

In this situation, the RS485 connection interfaces with Texas Children’s Hospital’s Honeywell site monitoring system, with analog outputs measuring voltage, current, KVA and other digital and analog parameters. The information is received at the hospital’s central engineering office during normal working hours and at their security office after hours. The data is also transmitted to the West Tower control room, which is the main control center for the entire Texas Children’s Hospital campus. Anytime an abnormal condition registers on a generator, the operator closes a set of contacts. That feeds into the site control system, where the problem is diagnosed and remedial action taken.

Burns DeLatte & McCoy, Inc, working with FKP architects, has handled all mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection engineering for the project. The firm’s vice president, Ken Alexander, is the project electrical engineer, who specified and designed the system. Design work for the project began April 1998, and excavation started in June of last year. With four levels of parking underground, the excavation was the second deepest for a building in Houston.

The depth of the parking garage, plus the fact that the structure essentially extends from property line to property line, left no space for underground fuel tanks for the generators. It also meant there was nowhere to store extra diesel fuel nearby. The solution called for mounting the1500 k.w. generator packages on top of 3000-gallon UL-rated double-walled fuel tanks, which became the bases for the units. These tanks will provide 40 hours of operation at 75% power. "We were able to do this," says Ken Alexander, "because the generator room is separated from the rest of the building by two-hour fire-rated partitions, and any fuel leakage is monitored in the interstitial airway between the tank double walls."

Mustang Power Systems was selected from four qualified suppliers to provide the power units. Everyone, from the owner to the electrical engineer, had worked with Mustang before and was comfortable with them. "I’ve had three or four Caterpillar installations in my career, and can’t say I’ve ever had a problem with any of them," says Ken Alexander. "They’re always going to be right at the top of the list of the manufacturers that we prefer."

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