Success Stories
Woman’s Hospital: Flexible GE Equipment Integration
Affinity Energy was chosen by GE for a simple SCADA integration, but ended up also solving several frustrating power monitoring issues for end-user Woman’s Hospital.

Woman's Hospital
Woman’s Hospital is a 168-bed hospital located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the largest specialty hospital for women in the U.S.
In 2012, Woman’s Hospital moved six miles south to a new location, due to the facility’s expansion constraints at their former location. With the move came the opportunity for the general contractor to select new equipment for the central energy plant. The electrical contractor selected GE electrical switchgear, and Affinity Energy was contracted by GE to provide integration services
Even though we had a brand-new environment, we were considering replacing virtually new equipment and starting over, which obviously would have presented a huge cost and time commitment.
Affinity Energy became involved and helped us work with the equipment we had to make it work more effectively for our situation. They understood our frustrations and truly wanted to help.
–Richard Oswald, Systems Specialist, Woman’s Hospital
Challenge:
Woman’s Hospital is obligated by The Joint Commission to provide detailed reporting on generator testing activities performed every month including runtime with electrical load values. During each 30-minute test, facilities management personnel stood by with a clipboard and stopwatch to record times, monitor power, and wait for the test to finish. If power dropped below a certain level, the test had to be rerun.
In addition, even though the hospital’s construction was brand new, power quality and power loss issues occurred frequently. As a mission-critical environment and health care institution, frequent power outages are unacceptable. After confronting the utility with the situation multiple times, Woman’s Hospital needed a way to prove the source of power outages.
Because Affinity Energy wasn’t involved with Woman’s Hospital as the end-user from the beginning, it was challenging to incorporate their wishes into the original scope. But it was important to Affinity Energy to ensure the end user was happy and ultimate goals accomplished.
Solution:
As planned, Affinity Energy integrated each generator data point to log into a database once per minute. But Affinity Energy also adjusted the original scope to ensure Joint Commission testing was easier for Woman’s Hospital.
Engineers developed a report spreadsheet that pulled the generator run data and graphically displayed it in an easy-to-read table. Instead of searching through raw data points in a database, Woman’s Hospital plant managers are now able to visualize system data, identify any abnormalities, and export the data. They can now easily produce graphs to include as a part of their Joint Commission documentation.
Affinity Energy integrated already-existing meters into GE’s SCADA system to record power data. In order to utilize the system to monitor power conditions, engineers configured it to record waveform capture. The data from the power quality meters provide a snapshot of waveform transients consisting of several cycles before and after. Woman’s Hospital can use this waveform data to troubleshoot the source of power transients.
Results:
Even though Affinity Energy wasn’t involved with the end user in the beginning, the company was flexible enough to enhance the original scope to meet the goals of both the equipment manufacturer and the end user.
Woman’s Hospital no longer endures the manual and labor-intensive process of recording data via clipboards and stopwatches. Employees have a quick, accurate, and visual way to conceptualize generator reports for periodic Joint Commission testing and reporting.
Woman’s Hospital now has access to specific power usage data for different areas of the hospital. After working with their utility provider about power quality issues using the data from the GE SCADA system as documentary evidence, virtually all of the issues have since been resolved. Ultimately, the utility provided a more reliable source of power to the facility and the hospital hasn’t had unexplained power outages since.
Success Stories
Charlotte Pipe & Foundry
Managing energy costs for large industrial facilities can be challenging. Like many manufacturers, Charlotte Pipe and Foundry (CPF) viewed high energy costs as a necessary…
QTS Data Centers
Data centers and cloud storage are integral components of the digital age. Customers of data centers, both businesses and individuals, demand uninterrupted access…
Concord Energy
Municipalities looking for a renewable energy source can simply look to their local landfill. First, we won’t be running out of trash anytime soon. Second, the organic waste in landfills…
UVA Medical Center - Logs & Alerts
Because of the University of Virginia Medical Center's rapid growth, it was difficult to keep track of and access event details in their central energy plant. When generators tripped...
UVA Medical Center - ATS SUBMETERING
UVA Medical Center has dozens of ATSs distributed throughout campus, but no way of determining if loads were growing over original infrastructure load specifications...
UNC Chapel Hill - Temperature Control
UNC Chapel Hill needed a solution to regulate temperature in a thousand research rooms...without being held hostage to proprietary programming technology...
Solar SCADA & Field Controls
A large solar developer with concurrent solar projects needed to finalize SCADA at eight sites before the end of 2017 in order to meet tax equity implications...
Steel Mill - Active Power Management
Affinity Energy helps a high-power steel mill in the southeast maximize output, upgrade their EPMS software, troubleshoot meters, and maintain visibility to voltage disturbances.
Novant Health - Alarm Annunciator
Novant Health and Carolina CAT seek assistance from Affinity Energy in an emergency generator audible alarming compliance situation.
NextEra - SCADA & Field Controls
Two 80-MW sites required significant changes to the PLC code and SCADA HMI due to the incorporation of a new OEM's inverters.
Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Commission chose Affinity Energy to upgrade their power monitoring SCADA system. The completed system...
Southeast Hospital System Alarming
A large hospital system in the Southeast with multiple Central Energy Plants needed a way to keep an eye on SCADA and critical alarms at three plants...with just one operator.
Woman's Hospital - GE Integration
Affinity Energy was chosen by GE for a simple SCADA integration, but ended up also solving several frustrating power monitoring issues for end-user Woman’s Hospital.
Novant Health - Generator Alarming
Novant Health and Carolina CAT seek a new generator audible alarming solution to simplify NFPA compliance for the addition of new engine-generators.
UVA - PME SCADA Migration
A large university transitions automation systems to a single power management system, and encounters challenges in user interface design and navigation along the way.
DC Blox - Customized SCADA
Affinity Energy architects a high availability, scalable EPMS and SCADA solution that manages critical equipment & reports customer power usage.
Bank of America - CFMS Migration
A new building provided the perfect opportunity to fund the Bank of America Tower CFMS migration to Ignition software.
Conetoe Solar Farm
In 2015/2016, Duke Energy Renewables wanted to outfit their new 80MW solar farm in Conetoe, North Carolina with controls and insight into each critical operational piece of equipment...
Duke Energy Solar Site Monitoring
Duke Energy wished to integrate solar data from North Carolina sites acquired from other solar installers into their overarching SCADA system of renewable resources...
JLL/Bank of America - CFMS Failure
When the CFMS unexpectedly failed for Bank of America, JLL turned to Affinity Energy for a quick turnaround to get the system back online.
Noncompliant Ramp Rate Response
A 20MW site in violation of their interconnection agreement looked to Affinity Energy to correct ramping behavior and remove oscillation in curtailed output.
Situational Awareness HMI
A landfill gas to pipeline project looked to Affinity Energy to deploy a highly sophisticated controls and monitoring solution with situational awareness design and ISA-101...
Mercedes-Benz Stadium - EPMS
Mercedes-Benz Stadium needed an electrical power management system (EPMS) to ensure computing continuity to control stadium lights and broadcasts...