Energy technology and services firm World Energy Solutions used its cloud-based platform to secure new electricity, natural gas and demand response contracts for Catholic Health Partners, which resulted in nearly $5 million in savings.
The contracts are for all 19 of its Ohio acute-care hospitals, plus all long-term-care, integrated-care and physician-practice facilities. The new contracts begin in 2014 and 2015 and comprise more than 750 million kWh of power and 2 million Dth of natural gas.
The auctions, which were timed to take advantage of dips in the market, yielded more than $4 million in commodity-price savings. The savings will help CHP to counter the effects of impending capacity-charge hikes across the state, World Energy Solutions says.
Since June 2009, CHP’s total energy-procurement savings with World Energy, has surpassed $15 million.
World Energy also brokered 26 MW of demand response for CHP, worth an anticipated $950,000 to the health system. These contracts mark CHP’s first step into demand response.
The move supplements the health system’s long-standing adoption of demand-side energy measures through its partnership with American Energy Assets. With the help of AEA, the health care system has enacted a number of energy efficiency measures across its hospitals, including lighting retrofits, variable frequency drives, building automation systems and high-efficiency HVAC systems.
AEA uses hourly trend data to help the hospital’s engineering team reduce energy consumption wherever possible. These demand-side measures have yielded nearly $3 million in energy cost reductions, with another $800,000 in incremental savings projected over the next 12 months.
World Energy Solutions has helped other health and fitness-related businesses save energy. Healthtrax Fitness & Wellness, the Glastonbury, Conn.-headquartered fitness chain, has saved more than $1 million through a series of online electricity auctions, energy efficiency measures and utility incentives, according to the energy management services firm.