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Australia’s North Queensland enjoys a tropical climate, where humidity rarely drops below 70 percent, and maximum temperatures hover in the region of 31 degrees C in the summer. Even in winter, daytime temperatures stay in the mid-20s. With a climate like this, it’s easy to understand why the Mater Hospital recently decided to upgrade its chiller plant. The hospital has more than 150 patient beds and is an acute-care facility providing specialised services, including cardiology, sleep disorder treatment, a post-traumatic stress disorder unit, orthopaedic and neurological unit, operating room suite and surgical unit.
It provides in-hospital and outpatient medical services to around 200 000 people and wanted to guarantee reliable comfort for both patients and staff – all while being energy efficient in terms of consumption and demand. This is especially important in areas such as North Queensland, where residents have to pay a significant premium for peak electricity usage.
We all know just how important air quality and temperature control are when it comes to hospitals and other healthcare facilities. They’re essential not only for the comfort of everyone inside the building, but also for infection control, patient recovery, drug storage, and optimum laboratory conditions.
Yet it’s also important to balance this with being environmentally responsible. Simply because of the number of people inside a hospital at any time, and the number of hours they are in active operation, hospitals use considerably more energy than office buildings and other facilities of similar size.
This is why it came as no surprise when McClintock Engineering, tasked by Mater Hospital to find the most efficient chiller solution, picked two of our water-cooled chillers.
Why Carrier Is The Perfect Partner For Mater Hospital
The Carrier Evergreen® 23XRV water-cooled screw chillers chosen for the hospital offer superior efficiency and performance, coupled with low operating costs. Several possible chiller configurations were modelled before a final option was chosen. Both McClintock Engineering and we at Carrier decided the series counterflow arrangement best met Mater’s needs. Early monitoring was highly encouraging, suggesting the new units use around 14 percent less energy, while still reducing demand by an incredible 46 percent.
These reductions mean considerable cost savings for the hospital – as much as AUS$13.9m over the anticipated 25-year lifespan of the chillers. The hospital also benefits from an estimated additional saving via a 28 percent reduction in maintenance costs. This is because of the high reliability, and ease of servicing, of the Evergreen 23XRV chiller.
Over and above these impressive benefits, Carrier’s dual-chiller system has provided Mater Hospital with N+1 redundancy — the highest possible standard for healthcare applications. Essentially what this means is that there is a reliable design parameter in place that provides for back-up in the case of a (highly unlikely) catastrophic chiller failure. Using two chillers – both of which are more than capable of individually carrying the average load of the facility – Mater Hospital patients will never be without a cooling service.
And finally, because McClintock Engineering and Carrier sized the Evergreen 23XRV chiller system thinking not only of current demands but future ones too, the hospital can comfortably go ahead with its planned expansion. Over 5 000 square meters can be added without the need for additional cooling capacity.
“This was the first series counterflow installation in North Queensland,” says Paul Robinson, Senior Sales Engineer at AHI Carrier (Australia). “This pioneering strategy has rewarded Mater Hospital with superior cost-savings, forwarding their mission of service to the community.”
Why Should You Choose Us?
Carrier is the perfect partner for Mater Hospital, and we can be one for your business too. Energy efficiency is at the very heart of all the research and technology behind every single Carrier chiller system. We’re proud to say we’re leading the fight to reduce the effect chillers and air conditioning systems have on the environment, while still acknowledging their critical importance to businesses and industry.
We’re passionate about innovation and quality, and pride ourselves on always being at the cutting edge of technology and customer requirements. We’re thrilled with our work at the Mater Hospital, and we look forward to partnering with you on your next project.
To find out how you can benefit from our expert knowledge and wide range of energy efficient offerings, contact us today on +27 11 878 6320, or complete this form, and we’ll contact you.
