The Dr. P. Phillips Hospital in Orlando started on a path to improved sustainability in 2011, an effort that included lighting upgrades. Three years later, the lighting upgrades continue at Orlando Health, a parent organization that owns the Phillips hospital and six other facilities in and around the city.
Orlando Health started a lighting upgrade at Phillips, a 550,000-square-foot, 237-bed facility, in May 2011. The first phase saved the hospital $141,000 a year by retrofitting existing fixtures with new ballasts and lamps instead of replacing fixtures.
To read our original 2012 article, go here:
The lighting projects — and the bottom-line benefits they generated — continue throughout the system today.
The lighting project was just the beginning of a commitment to conserve energy at the Orlando Health facilities.
From 2011 to early 2013, the hospital completed the first project, a three-phase lighting retrofit that saved almost $400,000 annually. The project targeted hospital corridors and a parking garage, areas that require lighting around the clock and that represent low-hanging fruit at many facilities seeking energy savings. In phases 1 and 3 of the project that included the corridors, T12s and T8s changed to super T8s. In phase 2, the parking garage portion of the project, metal halide fixtures changed to T5s.
The project was successful enough that Orlando Health is considering upgrades in additional areas of its facilities.
"We are still examining potential in the operating rooms," says Javier Perez, corporate engineering manager for Orlando Health who was energy manager in 2011. In that role, he helped perform the preliminary audit, worked on contract development, and conducted day-to-day and final project inspections. "But between some of the technology and new LED technology and seeing what proves itself, we're still in investigative mode." Areas such as patient rooms and clinics are also future candidates for lighting upgrades.
The success of the 2011 lighting project spurred additional upgrades within the organization. One project at the ambulatory care center converted T12s to LEDs, resulting in savings of $270,000 annually. Another project at the Orlando Regional Medical Center changed T8s to LEDs and saved $289,000 annually. A third project, at Orlando Health's cancer center, changed T12 and T8 fixtures to super T8 fixtures and produced savings of $51,000 annually.
The local utility's incentive program gives the health care provider motivation to undertake the projects.
"Any lighting retrofit that we can incur savings from will pay for itself in a five-year window," Perez says. "(The utility) will pick up the entire cost of a retrofit program, so they look at corridor lighting, and the savings were so substantial we engaged in that program. We pay for that out of our utility expense. They would look at how much money we would save on the utility bill and just hold that cost over a three- to five-year window of expenses."
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