A Power Balance Simulator to Examine Business Continuity in Hospital Facilities Due to Power Outages in a Disaster

Abstract

In hospitals, the energy supply is the key to ensuring modern medical care even during power outages due to a disaster. This study qualitatively examined whether the supply–demand balance can be stabilized by the private generator prepared by the hospital building during stand-alone operations under disaster conditions. In the nanogrid of the hospital building, the power quality was examined based on the AC frequency, which characterizes the supply–demand balance. Gas engine generators, emergency diesel generators, photovoltaic panels, and storage batteries were presumed to be the private generators in the hospital building. The output reference values for the emergency diesel and gas engine generators were set using droop control, and the C/D controller-enabled synchronized operation. In addition, to keep the AC frequency fluctuation minor, the photovoltaic panels were designed to suppress the output fluctuation using storage batteries. As a result of case studies, the simulator predicts that the frequency fluctuation varies greatly depending on the weather conditions and the fluctuation suppression parameters, even for the same configuration with the same power generation capacity. Therefore, it is preferable to increase the moving average time of the output and reduce the feedback gain of the storage battery to suppress the output fluctuation from the photovoltaics. However, there is a trade-off between suppressing the output fluctuation and the minimum required storage capacity. Furthermore, since the photovoltaics’ output varies with the weather, other private generators’ capacity and control parameters significantly impact power quality. The simulator proposed in this study makes it possible to study each hospital's desirable private generator configuration.