A hospital is not a car park with buildings. One campus carries four traffic systems with different priorities: patients and families, commuting staff, ambulances and emergency response, and logistics vehicles. Charging infrastructure must exist inside all of it without disturbing any of it. That is why our first hospital rule is site by subtraction: we strike off emergency lanes and ambulance bays, fire lanes and aerial-ladder ground, the main-entrance drop-off zone, and anything within ten metres of principal pedestrian entrances. Whatever remains — edge ground, mechanical parking, perimeter lots — becomes the candidate map. The second rule is time-sharing: daytime bays (7:00–18:00) are desperately scarce, so daytime charging favours short DC stops; overnight capacity flows to staff AC.
Three user groups, three configurations
- Staff commuting — AC-led. Shifts are long; a 7kW AC unit covers a full shift. Sited in staff lots or the campus perimeter, with monthly welfare pricing.
- Patients and families — DC-led. Visits last 1–4 hours; 60–120kW units fit the window. Placed in public lots around outpatient and inpatient buildings with clear wayfinding from the main entrance.
- Staff e-bikes — a dedicated shelter. A 20–40 port shelter in the logistics zone or near the staff entrance, physically separated from patient flows.
All three join one platform with split accounting: staff zones on internal welfare rates, patient zones at published prices, logistics metered separately.
Power and construction: the two questions every hospital asks first
Power. Hospital supply is high-reliability, often dual-feed with backup generation. Charging load must never hang off guaranteed-load circuits — operating theatres, ICU, emergency, fire systems, IT. We run a dedicated feeder from the main distribution room and, at survey, deliver a written statement checking whether the standby generator covers the charging load. It usually does not, so chargers are configured to shed automatically on mains loss. Construction. Tolerance is near zero: no clinic interruptions, no dust, no outages, no noise. We phase the works — civil and trenching at night or on weekends, dust-free low-noise equipment installation on weekdays, joint commissioning last — and provide a patrol checklist so logistics or security can fold charging into daily rounds.
Safety beyond the ordinary standard
- Charging areas keep fire-separation distance from medical buildings; emergency and fire routes are untouchable.
- The e-bike shelter stands alone, physically isolated from outpatient and inpatient buildings, with extinguishers, a fire-sand box and independent monitoring.
- Dedicated circuits everywhere; independent RCD and overload protection per port; full-charge auto-stop.
- Outdoor enclosures IP54+, IP55+ in basements and humid rooms.
- Construction screens and dust control protect outpatient order and infection-control rules.
Timeline, reporting and the board-level business case
Typical cadence: survey and proposal in 3–5 working days; internal approvals across logistics, security, equipment and IT in 2–4 weeks; construction 10–20 days — about 30–45 days end to end without a capacity upgrade. After go-live the platform watches 7×24, but we put proactive before reactive: a monthly equipment health report finds hazards before patients or staff find faults. Because the final decision sits with a director's meeting, our proposal splits the investment into separately quotable parts — staff AC units in the tens of thousands of RMB, patient DC higher per unit with possible distribution work, the e-bike shelter priced by port count — so the board can phase. On returns we are blunt: staff charging is welfare priced low with a long payback, and the report says so; patient DC serves service quality first and revenue second. A hospital project that promises fast money is a project someone should re-read.
Common questions
- Can charging load connect to the hospital's normal distribution?
- Never on guaranteed-load circuits (theatre, ICU, emergency, fire, IT). We run a dedicated feeder from the main distribution room and provide a written generator-capacity check at survey; chargers shed automatically on mains loss.
- How do you avoid disrupting outpatient operations during construction?
- Phased works: civil and trenching at night or weekends, dust-free low-noise installation on weekdays, commissioning last, with screens and dust control throughout.
- Who pays for what - can the project be phased?
- Yes. Staff AC, patient DC and the e-bike shelter are quoted as three separate parts with different economics, so the hospital can phase procurement. Operator-invest, self-purchase and joint-investment models are all available.