Salt Lake City, April 22, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In its continued effort to enhance sustainability, Intermountain Health is celebrating a new Remote Operations Center (ROC) that tracks and monitors energy use at larger facilities and has helped save more than half a million dollars in the first year by finding and eliminating energy waste.
The ROC’s system uses billions of data points to track energy use and find inefficiencies in systems not working properly. In a facility as large as a hospital, inefficiencies can be hard to find and often aren’t discovered until something breaks down.
“To keep a large building comfortable for patients it takes a lot of systems working together just right, and there’s a lot of spots where things can go wrong,” said Matt Wilson, remote operations center manager for Intermountain Health. “This new system picks up the smallest problems so we can find it and fix it.”
The ROC was made possible by a partnership with Rocky Mountain Power’s Wattsmart Business Program. Through the program Intermountain Health received technical guidance, and incentives for reducing its energy consumption.
“Our partnership with Intermountain Health has not only saved money, but has increased energy efficiency and reduced our environmental impact,” said Jessen Doxey, regional business manager for Rocky Mountain Power. “The Wattsmart Business Program provides the savings and solutions designed to help companies reach their long-term goals.”
One example of the operations center at work was a glitch discovered in a boiler that was rapidly turning on and off to maintain temperature at a medical clinic. Not only was this wasting energy but was leading to a catastrophic failure of the boiler. By discovering the problem early, maintenance crews were able to fix the issue, so it runs properly.
The ROC is currently in use at 18 Intermountain Health facilities in Utah and Idaho but will expand to 30 by the end of 2025.
In the first year the center saved around $300,000 in gas and electricity cost, with other savings coming from extended equipment life, and utility incentives.
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