Backup Power for Educational Facilities

September 11, 2018      

Generac Makes the Learning Curve Easy for Educational Facilities Requiring Backup Power

Educational facilities can face weather events, grid failures, or potential threats from outside parties. Power outages can cripple schools with impacts on class schedules, as well as the potential for data loss and critical equipment damage. For universities, this could mean losing thousands of dollars and countless hours of student and faculty time should heating/cooling units preserving grant-based experiments become inoperable.

Even elementary and secondary schools have fire alarms, phone systems, and computer networks that may need protection from a backup generator in case of a power outage. In addition, many educational buildings are used as fall-out shelters, so backup power is needed for emergency lighting to ensure safe passage for everyone in the building.

Power Up with MPS

With so much at stake, many educational facilities are relying on high kW generators to provide the standby/emergency power needed. These generators can ensure the heating, cooling, ventilation, refrigeration, security, and elevator systems can continue to work. These capabilities allow a school to continue functioning until normal power is restored.

Generac’s inventive Modular Power System (MPS) for paralleling generators offers educational facilities the power, redundancy, scalability, and safety required. The MPS approach does not require dedicated third-party switchgear. Future expansion generators simply tie directly to the generator bus. Because the paralleling is already built into the generator, the Generac MPS system inherently has greater flexibility for growth, requires less electrical room space, and reduces initial capital cost.

With Generac’s MPS system, the generators do not have to be next to each other to be paralleled. Many universities are using separate gensets located inside/outside different campus buildings to ensure safety from potential threats and maintain smooth operation.

In addition, the MPS allows you to combine fuel options: diesel, natural gas, or even bi-fuel. This not only gives you the benefits of genset redundancy, you also have fuel redundancy. Natural gas relies on a strong underground pipeline network that is rarely impacted by weather. Win-win.

Reduced Maintenance Natural Gas Generator Solutions

Natural gas generators are also becoming the preferred solution for many secondary and elementary schools as they do not typically have dedicated facility managers on staff. Natural gas generators require much less maintenance, while diesel generators need to have the fuel re-conditioned every 12-16 months, requiring either a skilled maintenance person or a third-party vendor to perform this task.

Natural gas generators also provide:

• much longer runtimes
• easier permitting
• 90% fewer emissions compared to diesel generators

Generac is the expert in natural gas generators: with two Frost and Sullivan “Company of the Year” Awards and a recent Consulting Specifying Engineer (CSE) award for our 500 kW gaseous generators.

Take the Fear Out of Medium Voltage Generator Systems

With the vast needs for more power at educational facilities, medium voltage applications with a medium voltage alternator and ANSI C37.20.2 gear are becoming specified. At the same time, many staff members can be hesitant to work with medium voltage systems. The solution—our integrated paralleling MPS concept.

By paralleling on the low voltage side and feeding one or multiple transformers, various system advantages can be realized:

• facility staff are typically more comfortable interacting with low voltage generators
• flow voltage equipment is much easier and quicker to source
• flow voltage rental equipment can be used when needed
• fno medium voltage paralleling switch-gear sections are required resulting in a smaller footprint and significant cost savings

Generac Understands the Needs of Education Facilities

While every educational facility has different needs, we know the protection of students, staff, and visitors is principal. At the same time, maintaining the privacy of personal data and the preservation of valuable research experiments is vital. With more than five decades of experience, Generac can provide the solutions you need. Our wide variety of sizes, fuel choices, and configurations allows facility managers, engineers, and contractors to make the selections that provide the best value, while meeting your kW requirements.

South Shore Generator provides support during every part of the process from sizing to specifications to design and installation. We remove the learning curve entirely with proven products. Contact us.

Generac.com

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