INTRODUCTION
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals is one of the UK’s largest NHS Foundation Trusts and one of the largest and busiest teaching hospitals. They have over 15,000 staff caring for over a million patients each year at their five hospitals and in the local community.
hallamshireThe Royal Hallamshire Hospital is one of the five local community hospitals ran by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals.
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals are committed to becoming a more sustainable Trust and with it reducing their carbon footprint and its impact on climate change.
The Trust are running a project called ‘Be Green’ which ensures their staff’s ideas are put into practice which help their hospitals and offices operate in a more environmentally friendly way.
THE CHALLENGE
Royal Hallamshire Hospital aim to reduce their carbon footprint and impact on the environment in as many ways as possible.
As part of the ‘Be Green’ campaign, the Trust encourage staff and the local community to help advise on energy saving initiatives.
Although the Trust welcome new ideas, they are also very strict on effectiveness, reliability and reputation.
Royal Hallamshire Hospital are very much in the public eye hence they have to ensure that all their decisions are made with the Trusts and local communities best interests’ at heart.
All energy saving initiatives which the Trust invest in must be tried, tested and have a good ROI.
Given they are a 24/7 operation, the Trust must also ensure that energy saving measures do not interfere with the normal working operations of the Hospital.
THE SOLUTION
Powerstar voltage optimisation has been successfully incorporated into over 4500 carbon reduction strategies.
With proven experience with the NHS, Powerstar has been exposed to the typical equipment and energy loads used within the healthcare sector.
Powerstar voltage optimisation was able to offer Royal Hallamshire Hospital complete assurance of effectiveness and guaranteed energy savings.
The installation process of Powerstar ensures absolute minimal disruption to normal procedure is encountered.
Once installed, Powerstar effectively reduces carbon output whilst going completely un-noticed to working operations.
THE BUSINESS BENEFITS
The installation of Powerstar at Royal Hallamshire Hospital achieved a 5.1% energy saving as well as a reduction in the Demand (KVA) of 11.57%.
Aside from reducing the Trusts carbon footprint, Powerstar also increases the life expectancy of electrical equipment and reduces maintenance costs.
Further associated benefits include reduced harmonics, protection against damaging transients and improved power factor.
The 11.57% reduction in kVA is due to the significantly improved power factor, which is improved from an average of 0.851 (before Powerstar) to an average of 0.925 with the Powerstar installed.
Voltage Profile
The graph below shows the voltage at the hospital before and after the Powerstar Installation. The voltage control provided by the Powerstar is very accurate at 224V ± 1V for 97% of the time.
The Electronic Display of the Powerstar, allows the user at a touch of the button to reduce or increase this voltage either locally or remotely (through ModBus, Ethernet, Wireless, etc). This enables additional savings to be made by slight adjustments to the voltage.
Power Factor Profile
The graph below shows the significant improvement of the Power Factor.
The Power Factor was improved from 0.851 (before Powerstar) to an average of 0.925 with the Powerstar installed. This is an improvement of 9%.
Power factor without and with Powerstar on the monitored supply.