This state-of-the-art acute care facility features 259 private beds, a high-tech emergency services department, and technologically advanced surgical suites. Opened in 2011, the facility includes all-private inpatient rooms with individual climate controls and natural lighting. The hospital has 15 air-handling units delivering 540,000 CFM; a 5,500-ton chiller plant; and a 2,400-bhp steam boiler plant. GBA partnered with Schneider Electric (the software provider and controls contractor) to implement a comprehensive Monitoring-Based Commissioning (MBCx) Program at the hospital as part of the ComEd Energy Efficiency Program. At the forefront of technology for the commissioning field, this MBCx effort included:
- Software installation at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital to extract data from the BAS. The data was sent to the cloud, where it was organized and analyzed by Schneider’s software platform.
- An analysis that consisted of applying various algorithms to the data, seeking energy saving opportunities, maintenance issues, and indoor air quality issues.
- Periodic reviews of the software analysis results to look for energy saving opportunities. Energy calculations were also performed to quantify potential energy savings.
- Implementation of seven energy conservation measures (ECMs), with a total verified annual savings of 794,000 kWh ($36,000) and 74 kW in demand savings.
- ECMs included air-handling units static pressure reset, condenser water temperature reset, economizer optimization, secondary CHW balancing and DP reset, and hot water differential pressure.
- The simple payback for the project was 1.4 years, which included all engineering, software, and implementation costs, as well as incentives from the utility.
