100% resilient, renewable energy healthcare campus

Heather Graves

Staff

October 28, 2024

ONALASKA – The steps to make Gundersen’s Onalaska campus a 100% resilient, renewable energy healthcare campus are officially underway – a project that will make the facility one of the first to accomplish the task in the country.

Envision Project Manager Ariel Thomas said the health system will install a microgrid on the Onalaska campus – which will combine a new battery energy storage system with Gundersen’s existing solar panels and energy generated through a longtime partnership with the La Crosse County Landfill.

Thomas said the microgrid is the last piece of the puzzle in the health system’s drive for power sustainability and resiliency.

“We already had these things, and so being able to direct-feed all of it and ensure the resiliency aspect for our patients is the number one piece for us,” she said.

Bill Farrell – chair of the Gundersen Envision Board of Directors and chief strategy and innovation officer for Bellin and Gundersen Health System – said the project is a big win for the region and the future of sustainable health care.

“Future viability depends on being prepared for change and resilient in the face of it,” he said. “This project builds on years of innovative sustainability leadership at Bellin and Gundersen – including the creation of Eneration to help others achieve success – and tens of millions of dollars in savings for the people we serve.”

Farrell said not only does the microgrid help fortify one of Gundersen’s largest campuses to allow continuous care – “it shows the necessity of partnerships for success.”

A look back

In 2008, Envision Director Alan Eber said Gundersen set out on a journey to be energy-independent, “which means Gundersen was going to create more energy using clean renewable resources than it used off of the utilities.”

“A lot of these assets that we currently have were a result of achieving that target,” he said.

When the partnership with the county landfill started, Eber said the energy generated was sold to the power utilities – netting energy discounts for Gundersen.

“Over time, the utilities started to pay us less and less for the power that we made,” he said. “The utility actually came to us and said, ‘How about we partner on a resiliency and empower resiliency program’ – it was a pilot program at the time – ‘and we turn your assets into a microgrid to serve yourselves.’”

Eber said Gundersen was already looking into ways to further benefit from the energy it generated, so the utility’s offer came at the perfect time.

“The utilities wanted to do it to help them create a new business plan moving forward,” he said. “So we said, ‘Yeah, this is a great partnership – let’s do this.’” 

Thomas said Gundersen’s work toward reducing its own carbon footprint goes back to its focus on overall patient health.

“There have been quite a few studies and things shown that carbon emissions are linked directly to population health,” she said. “So, being the people that serve our patients and ensure their health, we want to make sure that we’re serving it in all aspects right.”

Reducing the health system’s carbon footprint, Thomas said, is an investment in both today’s and future generations.

Thomas said Gundersen’s Onalaska campus is “very uniquely positioned” – less than a mile from the county landfill.

“Being able to pipe it a much shorter distance made it a much more viable project,” she said.

The already installed and utilized solar panels on the Onalaska hospital building, Thomas said, set a solid foundation for Gundersen’s continued goal of being energy-independent.

“We’ve already done these things (separately), and now being able to tie them all together into one piece is a big move forward,” she said.

What is a microgrid?

Karl Hoesly, president of Xcel Energy-Wisconsin and Michigan, said a microgrid is a local electrical grid with defined boundaries, like the Gundersen Onalaska Campus.

He said it can operate connected to the larger energy grid, or “island” and be controlled and function independently.

“Xcel Energy is the first utility in Wisconsin to offer a comprehensive program to support microgrids and other resiliency projects for large business customers and governmental entities who require a higher-than-standard service reliability,” he said.

Gundersen’s Onalaska project, Hoesly said, is part of Xcel Energy’s EMPOWER Resiliency program.

“Partners like Gundersen must have power to maintain operations, especially during unplanned outages,” he said. “Our EMPOWER Resiliency program allows them to choose resiliency options to best meet their critical needs while ensuring safety and reliability for patients and staff.”

Displaying what sustainability means through its continued patient care, Thomas said, is an important aspect of the project.

“Not only is it reducing our emissions, but it’s also ensuring that we can care for our patients at any time,” she said. “If there is a natural disaster that’s going on in the area, if utilities are out – those are usually times that patients need us the most. We want to be able to provide care like nothing is going on. Being able to open our doors and be 100% ready for anything that comes our way.”

Though Gundersen has done its best to move the needle forward in further supporting the grid and eliminating opportunities for brownouts, Eber said “none of them have allowed Gundersen to continue operations if the grid went down.”

“This project allows us to use those renewable resources to do that,” he said. “If the grid goes out, these assets will be powering this building and keeping it functional – that’s a new step for Gundersen and for health care, to be honest.”

Eber said the resiliency program aims to do just what the name implies – “to make sure that the hospital/clinic and surrounding buildings are operating all the time.”

“That’s priority No. 1,” he said.

The second priority of the project, Eber said, is for Gundersen to decrease its usage of utilities – which he said also serves as a success metric of the project.

“We should have enough generation on site to power ourselves 80-plus% of the time, maybe more,” he said. “We’ll be looking at those numbers, too, to make sure that we are minimizing what we use with utilities and maximizing what we have with our own generation.”

As with any investment, Eber said another measurement of success is cost savings.

“This project is ultimately (going) to help us reduce the cost of care for our patients,” he said. “So, we’ll be taking a real close look at that, making sure that those numbers are what we are expecting them to be.”

Every hospital, Eber said, is required by code to have some sort of emergency power.

“The beauty of this opportunity is, right now, hospitals have all of these huge expenses with their emergency generators in case the grid goes down, that do nothing 98.2% of the time,” he said. “Now, you know they can use these assets to generate their own power and use the grid as a backup.”

Eber said what Gundersen is doing with this project is “proving this technology is functional inside a healthcare system.”

“I do see other systems moving forward with this in the future,” he said.

Come a long way, not done yet

Though the projects that Gundersen has already done – including this microgrid project starting to take shape – Thomas said “we’ve come a long way to get to this point, but we’re not done.”

“We are going to continue to move toward net zero for all of our facilities,” she said. “Sustainability is a core piece of Gundersen, and we plan to keep it that way.”

Eber said without its partnership with Xcel Energy, “this would have been extremely difficult to do.”

The microgrid project, he said, is a win-win for both Gundersen and Xcel Energy.

“The savings on this project alone (for Gundersen) by putting the power back instead of selling it to the utility are significant,” he said. “And for Excel, it’s a great opportunity for them to pilot a new type of program and look for new revenue generation sources instead of just selling utilities to clients.”

Eber said partnering with Xcel Energy also connects Gundersen with industry experts.

“Excel has people on this project that are looking for things (we may not know about),” he said. “We have pretty smart people, but they’ve got really smart people, too. So, the more smart people you have looking at these, the safer these projects are going to be.”

The projects Gundersen has already finished, as well as ones on the horizon, Eber said, didn’t happen overnight.

“The assets that Gundersen has on this campus are some pretty major efforts to undertake,” he said. “When we talk about solar, there’s 475 kilowatts of solar on the roof, and the generators are about 1.2 megawatts – that’s making about 700 kilowatts right now. Those are major efforts.”

As others look to implement sustainability efforts within their own companies or organizations, Eber said he  suggests to “do the small stuff first.”

“When we visit other healthcare systems, we find lots of opportunities just to improve the way that they’re controlling their existing buildings, and they can save, you know, 15–25% of their utility bill just by changing the way that they’re controlling their buildings themselves,” he said.   “These are efforts that can reduce energy, reduce harmful emissions that are generated and save costs for healthcare systems – with very quick paybacks, many times in under a year.”

To embark on the major efforts, Eber said first, organizations should take the easy wins and work their way up.

“Make some progress – start saving some money so you can invest it back,” he said. “We run into a lot of health systems that say, ‘we want to put solar on our roof.’ Our first question to them is, ‘Alright, have you reduced your own energy consumption first – because you’ll get better returns for it, and it’s easier to do.’”

Sustainable together

Merging with Bellin in late 2022 – now under the Emplify Health brand – Eber said, has given both health systems an opportunity to learn from each other.

“We’re working with Bellin right now in employing the similar strategies that Gundersen did when it started its journey – and that means looking for the quick wins,” he said. “Identify the opportunities to reduce our energy use, save money and get staff on board with moving forward with these efforts.”

And Eber said that doesn’t mean jumping straight to solar panel installation.

“The first things that we do are not going to be large solar projects,” he said. “It’s going to be, ‘how do we make sure our buildings are running efficiently the way that they are?’”

Eber said once Bellin starts getting traction, “then we’ll start looking at larger projects for them to move forward with.”

Project timeline

With the groundbreaking happening this past summer, Thomas said much of the work at this point is laying the groundwork for what’s to come.

“A lot of that will be electrical work,” she said. “We are waiting on the battery to be ready and arrive. And then, because we are in the Midwest, you have winter, which kind of stalls things – so that’s a big piece of the timeline as well, playing nice with the weather.”

The project is expected to be complete in 2026.