Businesses can’t let soaring energy costs kill their ability to serve customers, especially when they’re in the business of saving lives. Faced with excessively high electric bills, administrators at Lewis County General Hospital and Residential Care Facility in Lowville, N.Y., began looking for technology that would control the economic hemorrhaging caused by its antiquated heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) system. During the summer, the HVAC system would run 24 hours a day and use discharge air dampers to direct cool air to where it was needed.

The hospital’s computerized energy-management system identified the fans delivering the cool air as a prime source of the bleeding. “We knew there were ways to improve the HVAC system’s energy efficiency, but we had to find a creative way to pay for it,” says Richard Schneider, the hospital’s maintenance supervisor. Lewis County General differs from most other county-run hospitals in that it must pay its way, living off the revenue from its services. So, it joined the ranks of enterprises investing in modern motors and variable-speed drives to generate enough savings to pay for them and the automation for running them.

At the heart of the hospital’s HVAC system was a closed-loop chiller, which included an on-site cooling tower and frequent air exchangers, as required by the Joint Commission on Accreditation for Health Care Organizations. The closed-loop system relied on three loops for pumping water through the air handlers and over coils to cool the air. Fans ran continuously to move the cool air from there to the various rooms, each of which has its own thermostat.

Because carbon dioxide sensors showed that running the system continuously for ventilation was unnecessary, the hospital administration asked Schneider to work with a Syracuse, N.Y.-based electrical distributor, CED Baldwin-Hall, to turn the supply and return fans down when they didn’t need to run at full capacity. To do the job, engineers at Baldwin-Hall recommended installing Allen-Bradley PowerFlex 400 AC drives on the fans. The manufacturer, Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation Inc., had designed the drives to work with fans and other automated equipment typically found in buildings.

Lewis County General was able to recoup the $32,000 for buying and installing the drives on the four air handlers in the HVAC system within six months, which was much faster than it had anticipated. One reason for the rapid payback is that the savings forecast was too conservative. “We estimated it would reduce the HVAC system’s energy [usage] by about 8 percent,” says Schneider. “As it turned out, we reduced costs by 15 percent.”

Get your rebates

The payback was twice as fast as it would have been without Baldwin-Hall’s help with applying for the New York Energy Smart rebate through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. NYSERDA is one of a number of state agencies and public utilities offering incentives for investing in technology that reduces a facility’s energy consumption. In Lewis County General’s case, NYSERDA awarded the hospital a rebate for half the cost of the upgrade, basing the award on the project energy savings.

These incentives exist because the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has found that optimizing motors can reduce motor energy costs by as much as 18 percent. Installing variable-speed drives are one tactic for cutting these costs, as Lewis Country General learned. Replacing inefficient conventional motors with Premium Efficient motors is another tactic, according to Motor Decisions Matter (MDM), a national campaign organized by Boston-based Consortium for Energy Efficiency Inc. The campaign aims to educate industry about the energy savings that manufacturers can reap from motors and drives. The consortium undertook the campaign on behalf of a coalition of energy-efficiency organizations, motor manufacturers and service centers, electric utilities, trade associations and governmental agencies

The rising cost of electricity makes even small-percentage improvements in efficiency significant for facilities running tens or even hundreds of motors almost continuously. With motors that numbered between 70,000 and 90,000 at one campus alone, Eastman Kodak was able to save $200,000 by replacing inefficient motors there with more efficient models, according to NYSERDA.

Estimating payback

To encourage other companies to make similar investments, several private and public organizations offer resources for helping users estimate savings and payback. MDM, for example, has posted motor planning kits, case studies, and a variety of tools on its Web site. One tool there is an interactive chart for estimating the amount of energy that a facility can save annually by installing more efficient motors. Other places to look for resources and tips ...