On Aug. 29, 2005, the hurricane hit Jackson and the city's main power grid failed, the hospital's standby power was enabled, and city water lost. Three hours later, the connection to grid was restored, the hospital load shed about 1.2 megawatts, and pumping trucks were supplying water to physical plant. Five hours after that, the grid again became unstable and the hospital switched to island mode and ran only with its 3.2 megawatt cooling, heating, and power system. For the next 52 hours, Baptist Medical Center was the only hospital in the Jackson metro area to be nearly 100 percent operational.

Another example is the blackout that hit the Great Lakes region in August 2003, affecting millions of people and costing the economy more than $5 billion.

When Amityville, N.Y., lost power for 14 hours, South Oaks Hospital continued normal operations, automatically disconnecting from the failing grid, and powering up its 1.3 megawatt CHP system to handle the full load of the hospital.

"Hospital staff never even knew there was a blackout until the local police station called to see if they needed assistance and numerous calls started to come in from worried relatives checking on patients," Sweetser said.

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