Power outage in Biomedicum on October 22
In the afternoon of October 22, parts of Biomedicum at Campus Solna experienced a power outage. The incident affected both the electricity supply and several digital systems, including the internet, KI’s website, and other electronic support systems.
The first outage occurred at 13:04, but power returned after a few minutes. Shortly after 14:00, another outage affected parts of the building, lasting for approximately one hour.
Technicians from Akademiska Hus were quickly on site to troubleshoot and restore the power supply. The initial investigation revealed that the control panel for the backup power system was not functioning properly.
- The switchgear in Biomedicum continuously monitors the voltage in the power grid and detected low incoming power to the building yesterday. When this occurs, the control panel in the switchgear sends a signal to the backup power system to start. The backup power system serves both Biomedicum and the adjacent building KM-B. The backup power for KM-B started without issue, but no signal was sent from the control panel to the backup power switch for Biomedicum, which resulted in a power outage in the building. After troubleshooting, we have identified which control panels most likely failed. These will now be promptly replaced, explains Björn Blomquist, Head of Technology and Service at Akademiska Hus.
Akademiska Hus has an emergency response team that receives alerts in the event of another power outage. This allows AH to manually activate the backup power switch so that the building receives backup power.
Throughout the entire power outage, the alarm function in the Biomedicum freezer facility remained operational.
During the power outage, parts of the freezer facility in Biomedicum were affected. Temperature monitoring was out of service until 18:00, but the temperature alarm function remained operational throughout the outage.
Staff from Facility Management Biomedicum responded to the alarms and evacuated one -80°C freezer once power was restored. All freezers were manually checked during the afternoon, and monitoring was intensified overnight.