University of Vermont Medical Center

How APM Steam's comprehensive steam program helped UVM Medical Center identify over $100,000 in combined annual savings — and shut down one of two boilers

The Client

The University of Vermont Medical Center is comprised of three historical hospitals: The Mary Fletcher Hospital, Vermont's first hospital, which was built in 1876; the UVM Fanny Allen campus, which stands on the former site of the Fanny Allen Hospital, built in 1984; and the University Health Center, which was built in 1924 and now makes up the UVM Medical Center UHC Campus. Over half of practicing physicians in Vermont have received their residency from the UVM Medical Center, as it is one of 138 academic medical centers in the country.

APM has been providing quality service to the 562-bed facility since 2011, helping the UVM Medical Center run their steam system as efficiently as possible as they focus on continuing to provide quality care to their patients and further their academic research.

The Steam System

APM was contracted by UVMC to survey several buildings across their campus, containing over 500 steam traps and over 20 different heat exchangers. As is common in healthcare facilities, the steam traps to be surveyed were located in a wide range of environments, including machine rooms, kitchens, basements, boiler rooms, and areas near patients. APM's field staff has extensive experience performing these services efficiently, safely, and without disturbing patient care.

The Power of Compounding Energy Savings

The facilities management staff at UVM Medical Center understands that taking a comprehensive approach to energy savings yields the best results. When they approached APM, they asked our team to build a comprehensive program for them; consequently, we recommended starting with a steam trap survey to let our staff become familiar with the facility and assess the most cost-effective opportunities for energy savings.

After surveying the campus for the first time, APM identified over $50,000 in yearly savings from repairing defective traps, and in addition, we proposed insulation for selected traps and cleaning in-place of several of their heat exchangers.

While savings from steam trap repairs are widely documented, estimating energy savings from cleaning in-place heat exchangers is still more of an art than a science; however, when heat exchangers have been in operation for many years without servicing, they accumulate scale, which reduces the actual heat transfer coefficient of the unit. By the same logic facility managers use to clean their chillers, cleaning in-place heat exchangers reduces the amount of energy required to heat the water side of the exchanger. Using a conservative 1% improvement in energy consumption from heat exchangers, APM estimated that another $50,000 per year could be saved by cleaning heat exchangers.

It is always rewarding for us at APM to know that our work helps our customers reduce their energy consumption, but it is even more exciting when we get tangible evidence, as in the case of the University of Vermont Medical Center: their boiler plant used two boilers to feed their entire campus, and after our comprehensive steam project, they were able to shut down one of their boilers.