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St. Mary awarded $400,765 for energy efficiency
Pacific Power has awarded St. Mary Medical Center $400,765 in recognition of its energy efficiency.
The award through Pacific Power’s Energy FinAnswer program is based on the $872,247 that the hospital invested to covert to more energy efficient equipment and systems.
Pacific Power estimates that the changes will save St. Mary more than $150,000 a year in electrical costs, plus $142,483 in natural gas. In fact, although the hospital has expanded significantly in recent years, it is using less power than when it was a much smaller facility.
The project began in 2002 when Pacific Power performed an energy analysis for St. Mary and identified ways the hospital could increase its energy efficiency. Pacific Power provided technical assistance to St. Mary through its Energy FinAnswer program, which offers engineering services and cash incentives to help businesses upgrade to the most energy-efficient systems available.
The largest of the energy-saving opportunities Pacific Power indentified was to convert the hospital’s air handling system for heating and cooling. St. Mary’s Engineering Department tackled the extensive project, retrofitting 254 air control boxes that meter air supply into individual rooms, installing a digital control system, and adding variable speed fans.
This one massive project alone will reduce the medical center’s energy usage by an estimated 3.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year without impacting comfort. That is enough electricity to power around 340 residential homes – or the entire town of Prescott -- for an entire year. It also will reduce St. Mary’s natural gas use by 169,806 therms a year, enough to heat around 170 residential houses annually.
Smaller projects included modernizing the elevators and the kitchen hood controls, which will save additional 73,111 kilowatt hours of electricity a year.
St. Mary is researching other energy savings projects for the future. Saving energy is part of the medical center’s environmental commitment, which also includes recycling, replacing medical devices that use mercury, sending electronic waste that contains heavy metals through a special disposal process, and using environmentally friendly products where possible.