May 15, 2006

Hospitals face unique challenges in bid for increased efficiency

Kingston team gears up for improvement

STEVEN DIETER

correspondent

KINGSTON

When Hotel Dieu set out to achieve higher energy-efficiency goals, it was no small task. Hospitals are among the largest energy-intensive operations.

Sufficient light and heat ensure patient safety and comfort. Equipment must be sterilized; the building must be clean; and copious amounts of water are used for handwashing in the fight against infections. Air exchanges are continuously active in order to ensure contaminants are removed.

Adding further challenge to an expectation for hospitals to become energy effective is the ever-increasing age and size of hospitals, many of which have been built over a lengthy period of time.

Hotel Dieu is no exception. The hospital complex is comprised of nearly a dozen buildings: the oldest dates from the 1850s while the two newest buildings are 40 and 20 years old, respectively.

Speaking at a recent green technology conference, Debra Krakow, an architect in the planning office at Hotel Dieu, said energy costs per year for the 600,000 square-foot facility run in the region of $1.5 million.

It uses over 10 million kilowatt hours of electricity every year and twenty million kilograms of steam is generated for hospital use, creating emissions equivalent to 1,200 cars.

With this in mind, Hotel Dieu created an energy management team comprised of members of the physical plant team and senior management (“the sceptics and the visionaries”, Krakow notes) to investigate ways to become energy efficient and energy friendly.

Hotel Dieu is not the first to undertake such an initiative. St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, with the assistance of EcoSystems, an energy services company based out of Markham, has also taken steps to make its operation more environmentally friendly.

Michael Kern, vice-president of EcoSystems’ Ontario division, said working on a project like Hotel Dieu was “an interesting opportunity.”

Mainstream energy management techniques which might be of use in commercial settings are not always as applicable to a hospital due to its operational environment.

The first goal, according to Kern, is to reduce the environmental impact of the facility. With that in mind, EcoSystems is compiling a detailed study for Hotel Dieu.

Key areas of the study address outdated lighting and better energy management through a new centralized control system.

The use of chillers to generate hot water, by running the chiller backwards, will not only help with more effective perimeter heating, but also provide instantaneous hot water, essential to meet handwashing and sterilization requirements.

Ecosystems’ detailed study has not been presented to Hotel Dieu’s Energy Management team, but initial projections for Hotel Dieu look promising. It is hoped that savings of one-third of the budget may be realized after any accounting for capital expenditures.

The presentation on Hotel Dieu was made during Thinking Green III, a conference aimed at enhancing knowledge about green technology in the areas of construction and urban planning.

Print | Email | Comment