Haiti’s Solar Powered Hospital

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Maintaining steady electricity flow in hospitals is literally an issue of life and death. In places where electrical power is unreliable, hospitals are forced to rely on generators, even in the midst of surgery or with patients on ventilators. So what’s a hospital in Haiti supposed to do?

Install 1,800 solar panels on the roof, of course. And that’s exactly what Partners in Health (PIH) and Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais (HUM) recently did.

Solar panels on the roof of Hôpital Universitaire de Mirebalais, courtesy of Partners in Health

The brand new hospital, which is expected to open in March, has a 200,000-square-foot roof just perfect for harvesting solar power. But installing the rooftop solar farm hasn’t been without logistical concerns. Firstly, the ample energy coming from the roof had to work with the shoddy electrical grid and system of generators previously used. Once the panels were installed, inverters to convert the electricity and send it to the grid were added. In addition to all of this new technology, six local engineers were trained in maintenance and repairs, with two of them employed at the hospital full-time.

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Haiti gets plenty of sunshine — and it’s actually too much for effective solar photovoltaics to work well. Another logistical hurdle was overcome by raising the panels about a foot off the roof and painting the roof white, which keeps the panels cooler and gets more rays to bounce onto the panels.

The results of all of this planning and implementation is expected to be a reduction of about $379,000 in annual operating costs, as well as preventing 210 metric tons of carbon emissions.

The HUM project is one of 11 other healthcare facilities integrating solar power into everyday operations (pun intended).

Providing stable electricity for healthcare providers and patients in Haiti (and other countries) and supporting campaigns like the Solar Light Fund’s “Energy is a Human Right, solar is genuinely saving lives.

Source: Partners in Health


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