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Low-Voltage Class 2 DC Lighting for a Hospital Expansion

Cence Power Case Study

Low-Voltage Class 2 DC Lighting for a Hospital Expansion

At A Glance

TECHNOLOGY
DC Power distribution
CONNECTED DEVICES
LED lighting, Emergency Power Supply System (EPSS)
CENCE PRODUCTS
Cence LV Hub centralized Class 2 low-voltage DC power distribution for lighting
CLIENT
Kaiser Permanente Riverside Medical Center
LOCATION
Riverside, California
DEPLOYED IN
Summer of 2026
SAVINGS SUMMARY
CapEx: Projected ~50%, OpEx: Projected ~43%
Low-Voltage Class 2 DC Lighting for a Hospital Expansion

About the Client

Kaiser Permanente’s environmental record goes back to its founder. By 1959, Kaiser Steel had built $5 million worth of air pollution control equipment at its Fontana, California mill. In 2016 the organization pledged to become carbon neutral by 2020, and it reached that goal in 2020. It has since committed to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030 and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

Riverside Medical Center is an existing Kaiser Permanente medical center, and the new bed tower is a part of a major expansion of its campus. According to the City of Riverside’s environmental review record, the expansion adds a five-story hospital tower with 152 new beds, responding to the need for more adult and neonatal intensive care unit beds, more operating room and interventional radiology capacity, and more efficient emergency department and clinical services.

The Challenge

The Riverside bed tower is an expansion of an existing medical center, not a standalone building on an empty site. Inside the tower, lighting supports care around the clock in emergency, surgical, and neonatal areas.

Maintenance is hard in a hospital. Independent engineers at Salas O’Brien note that while LED sources can last 20 years or more, their drivers often fail within 7 to 10 years. Picture a failed AC-to-DC driver in a conventional design. The driver sits in the ceiling, so fixing it means getting a ladder into a corridor or operating room, opening the ceiling, and working over an occupied clinical space. In a hospital, that is slow, disruptive, and difficult to schedule around patient care.

The wiring adds cost and carbon. A five-story tower needs a large amount of branch wiring, and traditional AC lighting circuits require metal conduit and junction boxes throughout. That adds material cost, installation labor, and trade coordination, and the conduit carries embodied carbon, which is relevant to an owner working toward net-zero emissions by 2050.

The Solution

Cence Power’s LV Hub handles lighting power for the tower differently from a conventional AC design. Power is converted from AC to DC at the Hub, and the LED fixtures are fed low-voltage DC over Class 2 rated cabling. The system is compliant with NEC and CEC standards. Under NEC Article 725, Class 2 circuits are not required to be installed in a raceway such as conduit, subject to the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ).

Three things change as a result:

  • Service happens at the Hub, not in the plenum. The AC-to-DC drivers, the failure-prone part, are centralized in accessible hub locations, so maintenance does not mean a ladder in a surgical room or corridor.
  • Lighting circuits without conduit or junction boxes. Class 2 low-voltage wiring does not call for the metal conduit and junction boxes that AC branch circuits require, so there is less material and labor built into the tower.
  • One conversion point instead of many. Converting power at the hub, at up to 95% peak efficiency, replaces conversion at every fixture.

Emergency power

Lighting hubs serving emergency circuits are fed from the hospital’s Emergency Power Supply System (EPSS), so those fixtures stay powered during a utility outage.

Deployment Photos

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The Impact

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These are projected outcomes based on Cence’s typical LV Hub performance ranges.

Easier maintenance

  • AC-to-DC drivers are serviced at centralized hubs instead of at every fixture.
  • LED fixture life expected to more than double, since the failure-prone AC-to-DC drivers are no longer in the fixtures.
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Simpler installation

  • No metal conduit or junction boxes for the lighting circuits.
  • Less material, installation labor and trade coordination built into the tower.
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Fewer replacements

  • Fewer AC-to-DC driver and fixture replacements over the building’s service life.
  • Less ceiling work in occupied patient care areas.

Financial Impact

Bar chart: lighting CapEx with Cence at about half of a traditional design

Capital Cost Impact (Projected)

The Riverside tower uses a centralized low-voltage DC architecture that takes conduit and junction boxes out of the lighting scope.

Projected benefits include:

  • Approximately 50% lower overall lighting CapEx.
  • Approximately 60% lower cabling costs from eliminating conduit.
  • Mechanical protection cost removed for low-voltage DC lighting circuits.
Bar chart: lighting OpEx with Cence at about 57% of the original, a ~43% reduction

Operating Cost Impact (Projected)

Hospital lighting runs around the clock, so the cost of servicing it matters as much as the energy it uses.

Kaiser Permanente Riverside is expected to benefit from:

  • Approximately 43% lower overall lighting OpEx.
  • AC-to-DC drivers serviced at centralized hubs, not at every fixture.
  • More than 2x LED fixture lifespan, with drivers removed from the fixtures.
  • Approximately 8% lower lighting energy use, and up to 20% where on-site solar is present.

Frequently Asked Questions

What lighting power system is used in the Kaiser Permanente Riverside bed tower?

The tower’s lighting is powered by Cence Power’s LV Hub, a centralized Class 2 low-voltage DC power distribution system. The hub converts AC power to DC in one place and delivers low-voltage DC to the LED fixtures, instead of using an AC-to-DC driver in every fixture.

Explore how a similar low-voltage DC lighting approach was implemented at Kaiser Permanente Roseville, or see our hospital LED lighting solutions.

the Cence Power team, Bolis, Sagar, Will and Bill

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