Enchanted Rock, also known as ERock, has entered into a long-term agreement to provide its microgrid technology for a senior living facility in Houston, Texas.
The deal with Tradition Senior Living comes as the senior care industry seeks ways to improve electric reliability following the death of patients in a Florida nursing home last year when Hurricane Irma knocked out power.
Tradition Senior Living, which builds and manages resort-style luxury senior living campuses, plans to use ERock’s technology at its newest facility, Tradition-Buffalo Speedway in Houston, Texas.
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ERock’s microgrid service, what the company calls On Demand Electric Reliability, will provide electrical backup service for the entire campus, including its life safety systems. This level of reliability sets a new standard in the senior living industry, according to ERock, because most retirement facilities do not have complete backup power, only the backup for life safety systems.
The microgrid will allow the senior living campus to operate normally during power outages. With electricity flowing to the campus, even if the central grid fails, residents will be able shelter-in-place during a disaster. This is important because evacuations can cause significant mental and financial stress to seniors.
“We are thrilled and feel that our residents will receive a tremendous benefit from our partnership with Texas Microgrid, which provides Enchanted Rock’s comprehensive electrical backup system,” said Jonathan Perlman, Tradition founder and CEO.”Through this backup, we have a system that will continuously run all electrical for our entire community, whether there is a hurricane or any other situation resulting in a total loss of electrical power. This backup service will run everything from our elevators all the way to our residents’ closet lights.”
“This backup service will run everything from our elevators all the way to our residents’ closet lights” — Jonathan Perlman, Tradition founder and CEO.
Awareness heightened last fall about the need to better protect seniors during power outages after a dozen deaths at a senior nursing home in Hollywood, Florida in the days following Hurricane Irma’s September 10 strike. The facility lost air conditioning following a power outage.
In Houston two weeks earlier, when Hurricane Harvey made landfall, some nursing homes also found themselves in a dire position, evacuating seniors via boat and helicopter.
The Tradition Senor Living microgrid will be funded by Basalt Infrastructure Partners via Texas Microgrid (TMG), a partnership of Basalt and ERock, which focuses on commercial and industrial customers. TMG will own the microgrid system and ERock will operate and maintain it for the life of the agreement.
James Vasquez, an ERock senior sales executive said that Tradition Senior Living has a proven business model and the addition of the microgrid will differentiate the new facility from its competition.
“We are proud that Tradition chose ERock/TMG to provide the microgrid technology that will set a new standard for the industry,” he said.
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