Building performance drift is a common challenge facing facility management, where finely tuned and commissioned building HVAC systems lose performance over time. The negative impacts of performance drift lead to wasted energy and millions of dollars in annual energy costs. For one building, the costs can be high, for enterprises managing multiple buildings, the costs can be devastating.
Banner Health has a network of 28 hospitals. The company needed to create an enterprise-wide strategy to manage key performance indicators (KPIs), including comfort, cost, and compliance – overall energy-efficiency as well as removing performance drift.
THE PROBLEM: PERFORMANCE DRIFT
In 2010 ETC Group began working with Banner Health to implement retro re-commissioning (RCx) projects for multiple facilities, achieving significant energy savings. Over time, performance drift on past RCx projects eroded much of the savings that had been achieved. It was also important to ensure Banner facilities would deliver comfortable environments for patients and staff as well as maintain compliance and improve reliability of critical systems. Banner adopted an enterprise-wide approach to energy savings and organized an energy management team and a remote operations center (ROC). Banner’s ROC and ETC Group collaborated to focus on maintaining cost and energy savings, while meeting environmental and compliance standards across more facilities.
TURNKEY MONITORING-BASED COMMISSIONING
ETC Group introduced a monitoring-based commissioning (MBCx) program that was piloted at the Banner Thunderbird medical center in Phoenix. Significant annual savings was achieved for this initial pilot, including $449,000 in lower energy costs, and energy savings of 4.7 million kwh and 13,600 dtherms.
To eliminate performance drift and proactively address energy savings on a broader level, Banner and ETC Group created a system that would be replicated across Banner’s facilities. Banner’s energy management team and ROC worked with ETC Group to monitor, analyze, and enact plans to maximize energy savings. The consolidated communications and shifting the mindset from project-based work to a turnkey approach with ETC Group has accelerated Banner’s ability to identify issues and enact change.
ENABLING POWERFUL MBCx TOOLS
The program leverages advanced MBCx tools such as Key Green Solutions®, SkySpark®, ClimaCheck® and BuildingFit™, a powerful smart building analytics and visualization tool. A custom reporting dashboard was also developed by ETC Group and BuildingFit™ to meet Banner’s unique needs. These tools and analytics make energy efficiency efforts more agile to reach greater energy savings faster, all while establishing new systems for better environmental and compliance controls.
RESULTS
ETC Group’s turnkey MBCx program includes three phases, totaling 25 Banner Health buildings (13M ft2). ETC Group’s work for the ten buildings (4.2M ft2) in Phase I has resulted in $3.84 million in annual cost savings, including 14M kwh and 88K dtherms in annual energy savings. Phase I results have exceeded cost savings estimates by about $1 million. Work for Phase II (nine more buildings and 4.5M ft2) is underway and is on track to deliver similar results. Phase III work has just begun and includes six more buildings (4.2M ft2).
Banner streamlined communications and decision-making by creating ROC and teaming with ETC Group. Issues are now identified and corrective actions taken faster than before. As a result, Banner now proactively combats performance drift to maintain energy savings. The use of key smart building technologies provides actionable data for smarter and more efficient decision-making. The BuildingFit™ team works to continuously develop new tools to save energy, ensure code compliance and improve overall reliability of equipment.
LEARN MORE AT JUNE 19, 2019 WEBINAR
Title: An Enterprise Approach to Maintaining Energy Savings, Compliance and Occupant Comfort Across Multiple Facilities
Cosponsors: BuildingFit™, Energy Management Association
Industry: Healthcare and Hospitals
Date: Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Time: 11 AM Pacific / 12 Noon Mountain / 1 PM Central / 2 PM Eastern
Duration: 1 hour
CEU: 1 Learning Unit (LU) - live attendees only
Register Now: bit.ly/MBCx-webinar
TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES DEPLOYED
ETC Group™ is an energy efficiency engineering company that provides services to reduce building energy waste, save money, and create healthy and comfortable environments. www.etcgrp.com.
BuildingFit™ is smart building data analytics software that works with building automation systems (BAS) and SkySpark® and applies AI and advanced data analytics to deliver meaningful recommendations and reports on building performance.
Key Green Solutions is a comprehensive sustainability management software designed to help hospitals track and manage sustainability projects.
SkySpark® is an open analytics platform that automatically analyzes building data to provide useful building insights for building owners and facility managers.
ClimaCheck® offers an array of products and services for performance analysis of air conditioning, refrigeration and heat pump systems.
