IBcon Smart Buildings Showcase features Banner Thunderbird Medical Center MBCx project

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8 years ago

At the upcoming Intelligent Building Conference (IBcon), our work with Banner Thunderbird Medical Center is being featured at the Smart Buildings Best Practice Showcase. Banner Health contracted with ETC Group to implement monitoring-based commissioning (MBCx) at the Banner Thunderbird campus and despite challenges, the project has been a great success. This project achieved an annual energy cost savings of $449,000 with an internal ROI of 194%.

Background: Medical centers (and mission critical, 24-hour facilities) use a lot of energy. After completing numerous energy projects, Banner's energy management team observed that savings and performance gains eroded over time (drift). They also wanted to increase operational visibility to identify new opportunities while maintaining savings for completed projects.

Solution: ETC Group deployed a custom analytics and fault-detection platform (SkySpark) and provided engineering consulting service and project management throughout a year of measure implmentation. This approach streamlined their ability to:

  • Monitor facility performance
  • Discover evidence-based savings opportunities
  • Implement upgrades
  • Verify the performance of upgrades
  • Continue to optimize performance into the future 

Challenges:

Successes:

Working with legacy controls nomenclature and integration

Annual energy cost savings of $449,000 with internal ROI of 194%

Lack of historic test and balance documentation

Utilization of custom utility rebate structure to support the project

Lack of submetering and confusion on loads served by existing metering

Partnering with Climatec to deliver desired controls and mechanical solutions

Coordination and communication of numerous action items among implementation teams

Banner effectively supported MBCx program with dedicated time from key operator personnel

Verification of weather-dependent measures with time frame for utility rebate purposes

ETC Group utilized multi-variable non-linear power regressions for measurement/verification of savings

 

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