One the borough’s largest institutions will be embarking on an upcoming energy conservation project expected to have a positive impact on patients, staff and visitors.
Jacobi Medical Center is undertaking a major $11 million two-phase energy efficiency renovation project of its lighting and physical plant that will kick off with new roadway lamps so efficiently powered by both wind and solar that they don’t need to be connected to the power grid.
It will later be moving on to larger, significant energy efficiency projects around the hospital.
The nifty new campus lights will be installed beginning within a month as part of the first phase of the two-part project, with 22 new exterior lights around the Pelham Parkway campus that have a photovoltaic solar panel and wind turbine atop each individual fixture.
They will replace 36 existing street lamps that brighten the hospital’s sprawling campus with greener, cleaner and much more luminous lighting, said Cyril Toussaint, director of Energy Management and Sustainably for NYC’s Health + Hospitals corporation.
A similar installation of 11 of the innovative outdoor lamps at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn is proving so successful that more are now being planned, said Toussaint.
Whether it’s a windy or sunny day, energy is collected and stored in a battery located inside the individual lights, he said.
Toussaint added that the corporation conducted evaluations to make sure the lights would work at their intended locations.
“Jacobi is a great place to have these types of lights,” said Toussaint.
Additionally, during the project’s second phase that’s expected to take place from early 2019 to mid 2020, the three tower lights that illuminate the hospital’s parking lots near Building 6, from 18 high wattage panels, will be replaced with energy efficient LED lights.
The LED fixtures will cut energy usage by two-thirds compared to the current tower lamps, saving roughly 70,000 kilowatt hours annually while the solar/wind powered lamps will save even more.
Between the two new outdoor lighting installations alone, “we will be saving about 135,000 kilowatt hours annually, which is equivalent to moving 25 passenger cars off the road or equivalent to powering 15 homes,” said Toussaiant.
In addition to these larger lights, thousands of LED energy efficient bulbs will be installed over the full duration of the project, including inside the main hospital building, some of which haven’t been updated since around World War II, said a Jacobi spokesman.
The larger project, expected to last 18 months, includes more energy efficient controls and lights inside hospital buildings, exterior lighting changes, upgrades to the hospital’s chiller plant (which produces cold air and air conditioning), minor boiler plant upgrades, and the repair and/or replacement of three to four air handling units in order to make them more energy efficient.
“These energy efficient measures will have a definite impact on patient and staff well-being,” said Toussaint. “Additionally, we will be working to reduce greenhouse emissions in New York City.”
New York City Health + Hospitals is working aggressively towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2025, and also meeting the mayor’s goal of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050, said Toussaint.
