Utility rebates are not new, but many healthcare organizations leave millions on the table simply because siloed teams are really good at addressing the issue of the day without an understanding of the bigger picture.
It pays to be energy efficient
The Department of Energy’s Better Buildings program tracks energy savings and the impact of energy efficiency across various sectors. For healthcare organizations, Better Buildings has found that “energy costs can consume 1-3 percent of a typical healthcare facility’s operating budget, which often represents an estimated 15% or more of profits.”
The group Focus on Energy takes the analysis a step further with this breakdown:
Energy cost impact for nonprofit healthcare organizations
Every $1 a nonprofit healthcare organization saves on energy is equivalent to generating $20 in new revenues for hospitals or $10 for medical offices.
Energy cost impact at for-profit healthcare groups
For-profit hospitals, medical offices, and nursing homes can raise their earnings per share $0.01 by reducing energy costs just 5%.
In Southern California specifically, utilities like Southern California Edison have enormous sums allocated for rebates that are underutilized because customers either don’t know about them or don’t have the capacities to submit for them. That’s in part due to the complicated nature of utility rebate management.
Each utility runs their own program with their own criteria and reporting requirements. In a fragmented energy market like Los Angeles, for example, that can mean multiple utilities across a single campus and double the paperwork when it comes to utility rebates. But ignoring these rebate opportunities can limit a hospital’s ability to address its primary mandate – to maintain a high quality of patient care while driving down costs.
InSite has been managing utility rebate programs for healthcare clients for more than a decade with measurable impact on both construction and operations. For Adventist Healthcare in Maryland, the rebate total received exceeds $2.4 million. For Brigham and Women’s in Boston, InSite has delivered more than $655,000 in rebates for energy efficiency efforts alone. These rebates have been awarded for a wide range of energy conservation measures implemented and validated through the programs.
Examples of utility rebate programs implemented
Issue
At one medical center in Maryland, InSite identified a discrepancy in outside air (OA) flow and damper positions for several air handling and rooftop units. In Econ mode, outside air dampers were providing a lower outside air flow than desired and designed.
Resolution
The unit dampers were re-calibrated and airflow stations were balanced to allow a larger outside air flow based on calculations and sequences from the original design. The units were retro-commissioned and further discrepancies were found between outside air temperature and humidity values from the global values on the BAS. Those were fixed as part of this rebate-backed ECM effort.
Savings
Once validated, these fixes received a rebate over $29,000 and saved the medical center 172k kWh in energy.
Issue
A single fan on a unit in a busy medical office building was stuck at 100% fan speed as a result of an incorrect sequence of operations that was put in place during a routine replacement service.
Resolution
Thanks to data integration and energy monitoring, it was easy to see the fan speed operating at 100%. It took a little more digging to identify the root cause, but once it was pinpointed to a programming issue, the BAS tech was called out to correct the sequence and the fan speed reduced to 60%.
Savings
Solving this single programming error on one fan of four that operated in this air handling unit resulted in a nearly $8,000 rebate and nearly 35k kWh saved.
Energy saved is money earned, no extra effort required
Southern California Edison runs rebate programs similarly under the Energy Efficiency umbrella while Los Angeles Department of Water and Power classifies their rebate programs in more specific terms.
Rebates focused on energy savings are simple – does the effort reduce energy consumption or not? What’s hard is the paperwork and the data validation to prove the energy savings. It’s likely you’re already doing the energy saving part, but if you’re not participating in your utility’s rebate program, you’re not getting paid for your efforts.
For internal teams, identifying rebates and working through the approval processes can feel like a detour from more pressing items on to-do lists that never get smaller. Working with a partner to identify and deliver these rebates will take the load off of internal teams and pay for themselves through the rebate returns.
Find a partner who has proven success in getting rebates for healthcare customers and can plug into your process where it’s already in motion.
About InSite
Founded in 2013, InSite is a leading solution partner for optimization in buildings, extracting value from data to engineer meaningful outcomes for its clients. We deliver financial and operational impact by harnessing our team’s expertise in engineering and building performance optimization. Our Engineered for Results approach combines an intelligence platform that collects and analyzes data for single buildings and entire portfolios with our program management teams who transform data into prescriptive recommendations.
