Danfoss HVAC drives help hospitals feel better

The uses and utility of VLT HVAC drives are many and varied.  One particular use we recently noted was within Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH), the regional teaching hospital taking in Brighton’s Royal Sussex County Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital, in Haywards Heath.  These strategically important hospitals provide acute services to people based around around mid and west Sussex, including Brighton.  The Princess Royal Hospital, for instance, handles elective surgery, whilst the Royal Sussex serves emergency and critical care.  In addition, the Brighton campus also provides important tertiary services for populations across the broader South East of England, including the Sussex Eye Hospital and the Regional Centre for Neurosciences.

So, an extremely important brace of hospitals, both extremely keen to take a look at their energy consumption, as part of a broader range of energy reduction projects. Danfoss was delighted to assist. Firstly, specified Danfoss HVAC drives were identified and installed to trial areas, to manage the hospitals’ existing air handling equipment.  These VLT HVAC drives enabled the hospitals’ Building Management System to react to shifts in outside air temperature and duct pressure.  These responses were monitored, and were soon seen to evidence adaptability and, perhaps most importantly, energy savings… both of which were of great benefit to the hospitals themselves.

By a simple comparison of energy consumption before the VLT HVAC drives were installed, and then after, the hospital administrators were able to clearly see the evidence of a dramatic reduction in energy usage, standing at a very impressive 50%.  For an institution the size of a hospital, that can provide very real savings, in difficult economic conditions.

Firstly, the actual internal environment of those specific areas were massively improved.  Secondly, the 50% reduction in electricity consumption equated to a saving of 533,000 kWh of electricity per annum, or 288 tonnes of CO2 emissions.  This can be of great benefit in terms of a hospital – like any large institution – addressing a green agenda and doing what it can to improve its energy consumption.  In pounds, shillings and pence, it might also be equated to an very real annual saving of £48,000.  Perhaps more important than pounds and pence, however, the drives allowed precise temperature control, fundamentally important to an environment such as a hospital, which will create challenging circumstances and therefore offer a deeper need for air temperature control, in terms of the well-being of the patient.

A success, then, in terms of numbers.  However the proof in this pudding would be longer term, in proving the Danfoss HVAC drives were efficient and versatile… but above all, reliable.  Well, the pilot has now been extended across the estate of the PCT, with two major hospitals in Sussex ordering a further 88 drives.  Across the board this should be seen as a massive boost for VLT HVAC drives, and a real feather in the cap for Danfoss, able to provide a very real, and important service, in reducing energy consumption for these buildings, buildings that must rate as amongst the most important in the country…