Finding Energy Savings in a Facility With No Downtime

Opened in 2016, the Josie Robertson Surgery Center is a freestanding surgical facility specifically designed for (largely) outpatient cancer and reconstructive surgeries. Part of the Memorial Sloan Kettering system, the facility is committed to patient-centered care and environmental sustainability. To create a healthy patient and community environment, the facility brought in utiliVisor (a partner at other MSK locations) to implement a bestin- class real-time energy management system.

JRSC faced many obstacles to more efficient operations. The best way to save energy is to turn it off, but that strategy isn’t an option in a surgical center. In addition, the relatively new systems were trained to assume 100% use at all times, rather than the fluctuations of normal demand. Also, no bypass or preheat setpoints had been installed. The ability to evaluate the system was constricted by the facility’s building automation system, which was limited in its volume, frequency, and level of detail. On top of these infrastructure issues, JRSC also needed to meet data privacy laws, joint commission and ASHRAE standards, and local emissions laws.

To meet JRSC’s strict operational and regulatory requirements, utiliVisor developed a gateway system to interface between the local BAS and the 500 points being measured throughout the facility. This advanced software uses a secure, networked solution built on open standards to collect and formulate the data, which is then transmitted through a direct data push without additional hardware. The system collects measurements at 5-minute intervals while keeping the BAS operating under normal conditions. utiliVisor’s operations experts document and report on savings monthly and compare them to base operating costs, normalized for weather.