The first all-electric hospital in the United States, UCI Medical Center Irvine-Newport, is set to be opened in 2025. Construction on the $1.3 billion medical facility for the institution, which includes the 144-bed hospital, began in November 2021.
The Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ambulatory Care building will be part of the UCI Medical Center Irvine-Newport, together with an outpatient center for advanced care, a center for children’s health, and other amenities.
The first of the structures is anticipated to open as early as next spring, and that building will be the advanced care center. This will be the UC Irvine system’s second significant medical campus; the first is in Orange.
Energy sources
A non-carbon-combustion or natural gas-dependent Essential utility plant will provide power to the hospital and the ambulatory care facility. The hospital will include backup diesel generators in case of a power outage. The ultimate goal, however, is for all daily activities to be powered entirely by electricity.
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According to Joe Brothman, director of facilities and general services at UCI Health, the facility will be heated and cooled by a “smattering” of technologies that create chilled and hot water as well as steam for cleaning and humidification. The hospital will use miniature steam boilers at each point of usage rather than the typical single central boiler.
More on the all-electric UCI Irvine-Newport hospital
UCI Health Chief Executive Chad Lefteris said, “The new center will be a full-service academic medical complex. It will bring a broad range of the most cutting-edge healthcare services to coastal and southern Orange County. This will include access to the hundreds of clinical trials underway at UCI Health.”
“We obtain 100% sustainably produced electricity since our health system has the ability to buy it on the open market. Particularly for an academic medical center of this size and complexity, the operations at our Irvine campus will use some of the cleanest energy that we are aware of,” according to Brothman.
