Hospital client here in New Orleans just got hammered by Entergy Louisiana. Power outage last week lasted about 3 hours during the afternoon. When power came back, their backup generators were still running but the building management system tried to restart all four chillers simultaneously to catch up on cooling. Created a 890kW demand spike that lasted maybe 10 minutes before the facilities team realized what was happening and shut down three of the units. Monthly demand went from typical 450kW to 890kW under Rate LGS. That's an extra $15,400 in demand charges for a 10-minute mistake during emergency conditions.
Entergy Louisiana - Multiple chiller startup disaster
Juan, that's awful timing with the generator handover situation. Georgia Power has been pretty understanding about power restoration issues, especially for critical facilities like hospitals. The fact that it happened during emergency conditions after an outage should give you grounds for appeal. Did the BMS malfunction because of the generator-to-utility transfer, or was it operator error trying to restore cooling quickly?
It was a BMS programming issue. The system wasn't properly configured to handle the transition from generator power back to utility power. When Entergy power was restored, the BMS saw that building temperatures were above setpoint and immediately called for all chillers to start. The facilities team said this had never happened before because they usually don't lose utility power when it's this hot outside. They've since reprogrammed the BMS with proper staging delays for power restoration scenarios.
Pennsylvania hospitals have had similar issues with emergency power transitions. The fact that it's a hospital and happened during power restoration should help your appeal case. Entergy usually has provisions for "unusual circumstances" in their tariffs. I'd emphasize the critical nature of the facility, the emergency conditions, and the corrective actions taken to prevent recurrence. Worth filing an appeal with all the documentation from the outage and BMS reprogramming.