UC Irvine all-electric hospital to be largest in country

A new hospital at UC Irvine opens Wednesday and it will be all-electric — only the second such medical center, and the largest, in the country so far.

- INGRID LOBET

PRINCIPAL project manager Jess Langerud gives a tour through a tunnel leading to the central utility plant.

People live through some of the toughest moments of their lives in hospitals, so they need to be as comfortable as possible. Hospitals traditionally connect with natural gas lines several times bigger than those connected to residential homes, to ensure that rooms are always warm or cool enough and have sufficient hot water.

But burning that natural gas is one of the main ways that buildings cause climate change. The way we build and operate buildings is responsible for more than one-third of global greenhouse gases.

UCI Health-Irvine will include 144 beds and will be entirely electric.

The difference is manifest in the hospital's new kitchen.

Yes, principal project manager Jess Langerud said on a recent tour, people are permitted to eat fried food in a hospital. Here, the fryer is electric.

"After all, you still have to have your crunchy fries, right?" he said.

He moved over to an appliance that looked like a stove but with metal zigzagging across the top instead of the usual burners.

"I can still put your sear marks on your steak or burger with an infrared grill that’s fully electric," Langerud said. "It'll look like it came off your flame-broiled grill."

The kitchen, though, is relatively minor. Some of the real heavy hitters when it comes to energy use in any new building, and especially in hospitals, are the water heaters.

At UCI Health-Irvine, that means a row of 100-gallon water heaters 20 feet long.