For Anna, this is straightforward since she is a practicing physician and there is a hospital here that serves the surrounding 100+ kilometers.  For myself, it is a matter of looking around and getting into adventures while trying to be helpful to the various efforts here at the hospital and its important research in HIV/AIDS and Malaria.  Over the years, they have made some incredible epidemiological breakthroughs with treatment and social management of these diseases.

Today I used good old pen and paper to document the power requirements for the new ARV clinic, which may one day get a number of new computers for an electronic medical records system.  The building is about one year old and was designed by the Chief of Medicine here, John Spurrier. They are currently looking at adding a number of computers provided by various grants for HIV/AIDS research here, and of course they need an adequate backup power system for their electronic medical records!  The power here is getting better, but is not entirely reliable and only recently became available at all times during the day.  Making the leap to a paperless system is daunting for any medical practice, but in a facility with these sort of electricity issues, it's a serious risk.

The job today was to document the electrical load of the facility.  It has a number of fluorescent lights, ceiling fans and some existing computers that are used for data entry of medical records.  In the past, I have gone over the deep end to determine electrical load in the datacenter, going so far as to wire up my own load meter with a multi-meter, current clamp and my own "extension cord" with each conductor independently wired so that the current (via magnetic field) can be measured with the current clamp (if you put this on both the hot and neutral wires, they cancel each other out).  As it turns out, our high performance workstations draw from 100-130 watts and our rack mount servers about the same.  Large LCD panels are about 45 watts.

Unfortunately I did not bring this equipment along with me but was able to reasonably estimate the total load on the building using my experience, labels on the equipment and a few searches online:

• 48 fluorescent strip lights (40 watts)
  
• 14 ceiling fans (45)
  
• 5 desktop CPUs (100)
  
• 5 LCD panels (35)
  
• 1 hot water heater (4500)
  
• 2 laser printers (400)
  
• 1 small fridge (475)
  
• 2 2700-watt a/c units
• Other misc. devices

All told I estimated the load at about 15kW.  They have used UPS units in the past for individual computers, but with regular stress the batteries only last about a year.  My understanding is that they are going to use a solar backup system without the solar - basically a building-wide battery backup system that is kept charged by the regular electrical system.

The juice flows in next to a mw antenna

In addition to the electrical requirements, there are going to be some networking needs to string up the building.  Almost everything here is of masonry construction (brick and concrete) so cabling is a bit tougher than snaking across a drop ceiling.  My guess is they'll need a couple 500' spools of plenum, a 24 port switch and plenty of long masonry drill bits.  Luckily they are working with some technology experts from the CDC on this project, but I'll roll up my sleeves on this tomorrow and at least share my thoughts.