Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Emergency Power topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Presenter questions Lowell General backup-power figures cited by city
Summary
A presenter at a Lowell City meeting said Lowell General's generators produce about 10 megawatts spread across four main units and one smaller unit, disputing a city-cited 30-megawatt estimate and flagging unclear unit descriptions in the report the presenter reviewed.
A presenter at a Lowell City meeting said Lowell General Hospital does not have 10 separate generators and that its peak backup capacity is about 10 megawatts spread across four main generators and a smaller auxiliary unit, challenging a 30-megawatt figure referenced by city administration.
The presenter said, “Lowell General doesn't have 10 generators.” He added that, based on a report from the people who installed the hospital's generators, the 10-megawatt peak capacity is distributed across "4, and a half, call it, generators" and summarized: "They have 4 main ones, then a a smaller 1." The presenter said industrial generators typically produce between 1 and 3 megawatts each, which informed his estimate.
Why it matters: backup-generation estimates inform city emergency planning, resilience studies and any decisions about regional power-sharing or hospital evacuation planning. If the city's 30-megawatt figure is incorrect or uses different assumptions, planners could over- or under-estimate available local backup power.
Details and caveats from the transcript: the presenter referenced a report provided to the city by an entity named "Markley," but the transcript does not identify who or what Markley is. The transcript also includes phrasing that is unclear on units: the presenter said "industrial generators are producing between a 3,000, kilowatt hours" and later referred to "the 1 to the 3," language that could refer to 1'megawatts to 3 megawatts but is not explicit in the record. The presenter suggested that if the city administration wants to use a higher number, that is an option, but he said he could not find any industrial use in the city or state that approached a 30-megawatt backup level.
The transcript does not record any city official response or a formal vote on the issue. No additional documentation or calculations were included in the record to reconcile the differing figures.
Next steps recorded in the meeting transcript: none specified. The presenter's remarks are the only recorded challenge to the 30-megawatt figure in the provided transcript.
