Healthcare

Looking to shave off some numbers from your hospital’s utility bills? With hospitals running 24/7/365- serving patients, employees, and visitors, they are some of the most energy-intensive establishments around, with bills multiple times larger than commercial buildings of the same size. For instance, when it comes to water consumption, Irish hospitals spend over €8 million on it alone each year. Large surfaces- with the long corridors and big rooms where artificial lighting is continuously used, the constant need for hot water and thermal comfort for patients, steam networks to meet the sterilisation demand- what impact do they have on your monthly electricity bill? Numerous offsite facilities add to the daunting task of managing your consumption. A huge chunk of the energy goes into the ventilation and air-conditioning systems. After all, high rates of air change are needed to help in warding off the risk of airborne pathogens, while also mitigating the heating gains that are caused by the lighting, specialist equipment, and the staff and patients themselves. In fact, reheating the centrally cooled areas can be chomping up more than 30% of the facility’s energy usage, yet it is also the main contributor to wasted energy.

The hot water systems, catering units in the healthcare facility, theatre, examination and other specialist machinery, to the office equipment- you want to ensure that they are operating efficiently. ecoVaro enables you to determine if improvements are needed for your HVAC units, track gas consumption for cooking activities, decide whether there building fabric needs to be altered to reduce heat losses, identify failed steam traps that result in heat wastage, detect leaks in your water supply network, or even note whether changes will be required for your boilers and chiller units. Use ecoVaro’s data-driven insights to optimise the lifecycle of your assets, and slash the maintenance costs. You get to audit the entire facility’s equipment through the data collection and analysis tools of the Energy Management Software, and determine areas that should be optimised to reduce your power bills, plus the carbon emissions of the facility. The savings can then be directed to addressing maintenance backlogs and improving patient care in the establishment.