Even with the Government cash injection announced in the spring Budget, pressure is mounting within the healthcare sector to make cost savings across the board.
With – Carbon Trust data reveals – £400 m spent annually on energy, heating technology specialist, Remeha, says innovative heating technologies like CHP could offer a solution. Technical sales director, Gary Stoddart, said: “A recent report from the Sustainable Development Unit (SDU) for NHS England and Public Health England shows that switching to CHP is likely to save the NHS £26.4 million a year. CHP systems burn natural gas to generate heat, while providing electricity to supplement or replace the grid supply. By generating electricity on site, energy bills can be reduced by around 20% compared with conventional power generation.”
Cockermouth Community Hospital and Health Centre in Cumbria specified CHP as part of an energy and carbon-saving strategy to meet long-term environmental goals and BREEAM targets. An R-Gen SenerTec Dachs 5.5 kWe unit was installed to provide hot water for general medical needs and electricity to supplement the main grid supply and power the plant room.
Gary Stoddart said: “On visiting the site, a Remeha engineer identified an opportunity to vastly improve system efficiency by ‘tweaking’ the boiler temperatures down by 1-2 degrees C. We could thus get the CHP running almost continuously, meaning that the hospital is benefitting from significant carbon and energy savings.”
