Urban General Medical and Surgical Hospital
Reducing operating costs without committing significant capital
Challenge
- Leadership of a 279-bed, neighborhood hospital in a major city was under pressure to reduce operating costs without spending scarce capital on building improvements.
- The 390,000-square-foot facility consists of three interconnected buildings controlled through a single building automation system (BAS) that monitors and controls pumps; chillers; air handlers; and, most terminal units.
- Given leadership’s interest in economical approaches to energy performance optimization, and the capabilities of the BAS, the hospital was an excellent candidate for retro-commissioning.
Result
- We assisted facility staff with applying for participation in the local utility’s retro-commissioning incentive program, which underwrote the cost of our team’s consulting services.
- Following extensive on-site evaluation and data collection, our team identified seven energy-saving opportunities involving the HVAC system that fit the low-cost, rapid-payback criteria.
- Six of the seven energy-saving measures were selected for implementation by the hospital’s preferred contractors. Our pre-verification assessment, however, revealed that several measures were not implemented as intended, diminishing their impact; these measures were corrected, restoring their energy savings potential.
- Our recommendations achieved a simple payback of only 6 months. The project yielded a 2% reduction in annual energy use, including electricity savings of 270,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year and natural gas savings of 9,500 therms per year.
