Lowering costs and emissions

Sunderland Royal Hospital is a 970-bed acute hospital run by City Hospitals Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust and offers a full range of clinical specialisms and therapies. The hospital is on course to recover the £600,000 capital cost of its new combined heat and power (CHP) system – supplied and operated by cogeneration specialist ENER-G – in less than three years.
    
The Trust has also installed three high efficiency water boilers, replacing old steam boilers. The entire installation is making carbon savings of approximately 3,447 tonnes per year – equivalent to the environmental benefit of 344,700 trees.
    
Rob Allport, divisional director for estates and facilities at Sunderland Royal Hospital, said: “This latest installation complements a whole range of investment made by the Trust in energy saving/sustainability over the last 20 years and the Trust has already delivered its 10-year 2010 energy efficiency target of existing buildings.
    
“The Trust welcomes the new NHS target of reducing its carbon footprint by 60 per cent by 2050 and this latest CHP installation is giving us a very good start to achieving this target.”

Gas conversion
CHP technology converts gas into both electricity and heat in a single process at the point of use. The technology works by generating electricity on-site and recovering the majority of the heat created in the process, in contrast to conventional power stations where heat is simply wasted into the atmosphere through power station cooling towers.
    
In addition, significant amounts of energy are lost along the many miles of electrical distribution cables needed to bring the power to site. CHP is a proven, energy-saving technology that can transform environmental and cost performance. It is growing in popularity amid increasing economic pressure, regulatory concerns, and fears over security of supply. The technology is ideal for applications with consistent demands for thermal energy and considerable electrical base loads, including large general hospitals.
    
The new system at Sunderland Royal Hospital has replaced a gas turbine powered CHP unit, supplied by ENER-G 16 years ago.

Carbon Reduction Strategy
As Europe’s biggest employer, the NHS contributes approximately three per cent of England’s total carbon dioxide emissions, so there is a powerful need to implement effective carbon abatement strategies like CHP. A political mandate has now been set through proposals for a new Carbon Reduction Strategy that commits the service as a whole to reducing emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. The potential for CHP use in the NHS is huge.
    
Sunderland Royal’s top-end CHP system is among the first installations in Europe by ENER-G of its new 1.55MW MTU unit powered by a natural gas engine. This comprises a 16v gas generator set with LV generation that is transformed to 11kV in a transformer for connection to the site.
    
The new MTU reciprocating unit develops 1550KWe, compared to the 1050KWe output of the hospital’s previous gas turbine engine. CHP systems from ENER-G are available from 4kW to 10MW. Typical applications run on natural gas, although systems can also be fuelled by biogas, propane, diesel or bio-diesel.
    
In the range up to 2MWe capacity; units can be delivered and packaged as a single unit with the controls, heat recovery units and engine within neat, compact, acoustically insulated enclosures suitable for either internal of external installation. Above 1MWe, each one of ENER-G’s cogeneration units is bespoke, with the engine and system carefully designed to meet each specific application.
     
The previous gas turbine power unit at Sunderland Royal has enabled carbon savings of around 30,000 tonnes over 16-years.
    
ENER-G senior service engineer, Ian Rutherford, had been responsible for the power unit at Sunderland Royal CHP unit for 16 years. He commented: “The previous turbine machinery was a fantastic piece of engineering and I will be sorry to see it go. However, the new reciprocating engine represents the latest advances in technology and is more economical from an operational point of view.”
    
Other major general hospitals to have implemented ENER-G’s cleaner, greener CHP technology are Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, Solihull Hospital and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. An award-winning £5m energy efficiency programme at Birmingham Heartlands has reduced primary energy consumption by 21 per cent; CO2 emissions by 42 per cent; and utility spend by 24 per cent. The 5,600 tonne cut in CO2 emissions equates to the environmental benefit of 560,000 trees.
    
The Birmingham Heartlands programme, financed by ENER-G Combined Power was structured around the principles of a Public Private Partnership contract, and included a £403,000 grant from the Carbon Trust under the government’s Community Energy Programme. Ener-g Combined Power provides the trust with a guaranteed level of performance for the system over a 15 year period.

CHP in Solihull
An £5.7 million green energy system is being installed at Solihull Hospital, with projected annual savings of £293,000 and a 45 per cent reduction in carbon emissions.
    
The CHP system will enable the hospital to generate its own electricity, cutting annual C02 emissions by 1,920 tonnes – the equivalent environmental benefit of a forest of more than 295,000 trees. Construction work on the site in Lode Lane, Solihull, started recently and is expected to be finished by early 2010.
    
Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust switched on new CHP technology at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital to cut £2 million off the Trust’s energy bills. The combined heat and power system also means big reductions in Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust’s carbon emissions, a factor that led to the Carbon Trust awarding a grant of £549,000 – the maximum grant available.