Concord Hospital

Concord Hospital is a nationally accredited 230-bed medical center providing comprehensive care services and programs to residents throughout New Hampshire. It is known and recognized for its treatment of more 40 medical specialties, including orthopedics, cancer, cardiac care, urology, and women’s healthcare.

Along with providing outstanding medical care and meeting growing community needs, the hospital must also make its services as cost effective as possible. By incorporating energy efficiency into the planning process, the hospital’s leadership has discovered that they can expand care services and control operating costs at the same time.

Since 2006, the hospital has completed a variety of natural gas and electric energy efficiency projects. Natural gas savings annually are 179,370 therms, saving nearly $213,000. Concord also saves nearly 3.7 million kWh, amounting to almost $507,000 each year.

Projects have included lighting retrofits and controls in several hospital buildings and parking garages. Concord also built a new Central Plant with new high-efficiency four-pass boilers replacing old 1950s-style two-pass boilers. The boilers are equipped with the latest controls and stack economizers to ensure optimum efficiency. The plant also has a new “free cooling” system that uses external air (instead of a chiller) to deliver cool, conditioned air within the hospital during the winter. Old air conditioning wall units in patient rooms have been replaced with a more efficient centralized system that uses variable air volume (VAV) boxes for more accurate temperature control.

Paul Cantrell, Concord Hospital’s Director of Facilities and Operations, has high praise for its partnership with Liberty Utilities and Unitil. Without the incentives and technical assistance provided by both companies, he said “we may not have been as prepared to pursue doing the right thing...You need support from your utility to be there from the beginning to end. We were lucky to have found that with Liberty Utilities and Unitil Corporation.”

Signifying the hospital’s commitment to promote energy efficiency throughout New England, hospital representatives have spoken to many organizations, including the New England Healthcare Engineers Society, the Association of Facilities Engineering, and the New Hampshire Healthcare Society of Facility Managers. Last year, the New England Energy Engineers Association gave the hospital its award for Best Performance Contract in New England.

The best news is that money saved through efficiency projects can now be allocated to various hospital services, enhancing local healthcare. By saving energy, Concord Hospital is also saving lives—and proving that energy efficiency is very good medicine for an entire community.