Case Study:

St. Joseph's Hospital

St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center Substantially Reduces Energy Use, Costs

Background

Starting in 2008, St. Joseph’s embarked on a series of capital development projects to upgrade and expand the hospital’s operations and improve its efficiency. Hospital administrators looked to the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to help them with their initiative.

Recommendations

St. Joseph’s worked with NYSERDA to incorporate energy efficiency into their $265 million development plan to expand their emergency department and Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, as well as add a new patient tower and operating room surgical suites.

NYSERDA provided technical assistance services to help St. Joseph’s identify and evaluate energy efficiency opportunities. Through the process, the hospital was able to identify both the life cycle costs and projected savings for the improvements. All told the hospital planned to install enhanced insulation and glazing, improved lighting power density and exterior lighting, power steam hybrid boilers with economizers and control systems, chillers with waterside economizers and cooling tower variable speed drives, and exhaust heat recovery pumps.

In 2011, St. Joseph’s engaged NYSERDA’s data center outreach team to help them quantify the energy savings from a planned computer upgrade and consolidation project. The initiative included upgrading network gear and replacing their current desktops and servers with virtual machines. These measures reduced energy used by desktop interfaces and allowed 268 older, inefficient servers to be removed from hospital operations.

In 2013, St. Joseph’s began work on a $15 million combined heat and power (CHP) plant with help from NYSERDA. The CHP plant uses a 4.6-MW Solar Mercury 50 natural gas-fired combustion turbine to produce electricity and heat, along with hot water and chilled water and provides a majority of St. Joseph’s electricity needs.

Support and Results

NYSERDA’s Commercial New Construction incentive of $394,196 helped St. Joseph’s defray a portion of the implementation cost to install energy efficiency improvements. In total, St. Joseph’s investment could result in annual energy savings of more than 1,413,227 kWh for an annual energy cost savings of $377,168. Through NYSERDA’s Industrial and Process Efficiency (IPE) Program, St. Joseph’s earned $103,510 for reducing data center energy consumption by 862,587 kWh per year. St. Joseph’s CHP plant commissioning and startup began in August 2014, and consistent system operation for beneficial use began by January 1, 2015. After two years of measurement and verification, NYSERDA will be awarding a performance-based incentive of up to $2 million for the CHP plant. It is estimated that the new system will generate 25 million kWh annually, equivalent to the amount of power consumed by approximately 3,600 homes.