First PoE Project Goes Up in San Diego

The first Power over Ethernet project is currently under construction in San Diego. The project is at Scripps MD Anderson Cancer Center for Scripps Health is a private, nonprofit, integrated health system in San Diego. This PoE building will serve as Scripps’ Pilot project for PoE connected lighting solutions. BNBuilders is the contractor on the project, and the firm has built several highly technical projects for other biotech, life science and healthcare companies.

“Scripps was eager to implement this new technology on their Scripps MD Anderson Cancer Center project as a test pilot program,” Matthew DeMonaco, project manager at BNBuilders, tells GlobeSt.com. “This allowed all partners—design, procurement, installation, and programming—to carry forward all major lessons learned to achieve success on their upcoming projects. It happens to be the first in San Diego.”

There are several benefits to PoE. Overall, the technology will maximize efficiency and create an infrastructure for smart building features at the property. DeMonaco lists a wide range of benefits, from remote HVAC controls of space, remote access/security control and manageable features from a smart phone to cost savings, Data gathering capabilities and lower operational costs. This building 16,500 square feet, and lighting in the building will be powered by the electric charge carried over Ethernet cables. The cables also route data to the building’s management system.

Of course, there are challenges to building a property with this technology. “The PoE lighting system is designed such that it can be installed in shared network infrastructure or be physically segregated,” says DeMonaco. “In either case, the customer is expected to be heavily involved in the integration of the lighting system into their network, since it will ultimately fall to them to maintain and manage the IT network, or an IT partner who manages an end-user’s network. “A major challenge was getting all parties conformed to the integration and delineating the scope of work from the network design, supply and configuration, testing, and maintenance.”

This is the first building of its kind in San Diego, but DeMonaco expects that there will be more to come. “Once all capabilities of the POE system is implemented and successfully used, other companies and markets will look to utilize this within their buildings to be more advanced, especially in the medical field,” he says.