Newport Hospital

Client:
Newport Hospital

Location:
Newport, Rhode Island

Project type:
Direct purchase

Facility:
200-bed comprehensive community hospital, staffed by 193 physicians and more than 800 nurses, technicians and other personnel

Facility size:
361,266 square feet

Project cost:
$552,594

Savings:
$88,639

Utility conservation incentives:
$68,732

Project overview

The Cogenex unit of Alliant Energy Integrated Services proposed a comprehensive integrated systems approach for energy management at Newport Hospital to improve operating efficient and lower utility costs.

Project details

The hospital's lighting systems consisted of inefficient ballasts and aging fixtures. With financial incentives from the local utility to buy down the cost of lighting work, Newport Hospital and Alliant Energy Integrated Services retrofitted all facility lighting fixtures with high-efficient ballasts and T-8 lamps.

This conservation measure not only cut electric costs for the hospital, but also reduced maintenance costs by standardizing the hospital's lighting equipment.

In addition to the lighting upgrades, Newport Hospital also underwent a retrofit of its constant flow drive operating systems. This extensive upgrade modified the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system to variable flow drive operation, which provide greater interior climate control.

The domestic water booster pumps and boiler feed water pumps were also converted to variable flow drives to allow greater control and increase conservation of water use. Alliant Energy Integrated Services also replaced the boiler steam traps to reduce steam loss from the heating system.

Alliant Energy Integrated Services also expanded the hospital's existing energy management control system (ECMS) to provide greater control of the installed conservation measures. The improved ECMS provides facility staff with greater flexibility to control heating and cooling throughout the hospital, and to schedule lighting system operations as needed throughout the facility.

Recommendation

"Energy conservation programs such as the one we embarked upon are just super," said Jim Gilmore, director of engineering with Newport Hospital. "It's a terrific approach to upgrading aging systems and/or components with the latest technology... and the financing is built right into the project. Even the CFO can walk away with a smile on this one."