Northbay Healthcare Facilities Get Energy Efficiency Makeover Via Siemens Building Technologies Performance-Based Solution

Driving operating costs down while improving patient and staff comfort may be a tall order, but NorthBay Healthcare will achieve just that with the help of Siemens Building Technologies, Inc., and a guaranteed performance-based solution that will deliver a broad range of energy efficient building system upgrades and retrofits.

These facility improvement measures are slated for NorthBay Healthcare’s NorthBay Medical Center and NorthBay VacaValley Hospital located in Fairfield and Vacaville, Calif. respectively. Once the facility improvements are completed, the two hospitals combined are guaranteed to save 2,765,634 kWh of electricity annually which should equate to millions in avoided annual energy costs over the 10-year life of the performance-based contract.  This translates to both a cost savings and hospital facilities that are more environmentally friendly.

“We are under tremendous pressure to find new ways to manage operating costs without impacting patient care or staffing,” says NorthBay Healthcare’s director of plant operations and general services, Dave Mathews. “Implementing this performance solution with Siemens is an excellent way to achieve our cost-savings goals because the energy-efficiency upgrades—which normally would consume our capital improvement budgets—are financed by the savings the upgrades are guaranteed to produce. More importantly, we will have better overall control of the facility environment, which means better patient and staff comfort, as well as a significant reduction in environmental emissions.”

Facility-wide energy efficiency improvements being installed now have been designed to reduce electrical, heating cooling and waste disposal costs, as well as allow NorthBay Healthcare to generate some of its own electricity. Facility improvements at both hospitals include new building automation systems and controls, engineering and installing new cogeneration units, interior/exterior lighting upgrades and waste monitoring systems. At NorthBay Medical Center, plans call for a newly configured chilled water system featuring variable frequency drive (VFD) pump motors which will contribute a great deal to overall system efficiency. However, it’s the cogeneration system that will offer the biggest portion of energy savings contributing nearly 30 percent of total annual kWh reductions at both facilities. As mentioned, with new systems operating as specified, energy savings for both facilities are anticipated to reach 2,765,634 kWh per year. According to Siemens, over the 10-year term of the contract, this will reduce emissions of typical greenhouse gases (CO2, NOx and SO2) by approximately 17 million pounds and save emissions equivalent to driving the typical family car some 100,000 miles.*

*Sylvania QuickAudit Emissions Calculator