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Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health System install advanced metering

Thomas Jefferson University and the Jefferson Health System (JHS) make up the largest healthcare group in the Delaware Valley (Philadelphia) region. The Jefferson Health System is made up of four major healthcare groups as well as hundreds of small practices and other properties.

Comprising of more than 10 million square feet of clinical, research, teaching and housing property, JHS has an electrical peak demand of 50 megawatts and consumes more than 300,000,000 KWH per year. They spend about $45 million a year for all of their utilities.

Three years ago, JHS aggregated all load and purchased electricity for the entire health system. They received a great rate due to the size of the organization and early participation in the deregulated electric market.

Why advanced metering?

JHS chose Alliant Energy Integrated Services to implement the installation of a metering project. With the cost of electricity rising and the amount of companies participating in the market declining, the previously negotiated three-year, fixed price for electricity was going to take a hit. With a true aggregated metered load, JHS can now go to the marketplace as an educated consumer.

Also, by bringing the metering in real time with the software trending, equipment running out of tolerance can be detected quickly. Other benefits include the use of monitoring, customized reporting, verification of utility bills incorporating gas, steam, water, and remote site monitoring.

Scope of Project

A walkthrough of all buildings was performed to locate all meters and data racks, and identify location of data loggers. After installing a few pilot phone modems, the University Ethernet system was utilized. Due to the size of the health system, the installation was broken down into three phases.

Phase 1 was to install all revenue metering in Thomas Jefferson University. Phase 2 was to install revenue metering throughout the Jefferson Health System. Phase 3 was to retrofit and install meters on all electrical sub meters and incoming steam and natural gas meters. The revenue and feeder meters capture both kWh and power factor, since JHS pays a penalty on all loads below 95% power factor.

JHS also decided to use a web-based client because of so many users at so many different locations (and to save money). At each meter location, the following equipment was installed: customer contacts for kWh and KQ (for power factor) – installed by the utility company; isolation contacts, data logger/recorder; terminal server and data jack. Cabling was installed between each meter (including all subs) and the data logger.

In the computer center, a database server, application server, and web server were purchased and installed. Stark RT software was installed on both the application server and the manager’s personal computer. Savenergyonline was set up on the web server. A meter configuration was then set up, allowing reports to be automatically sent out via e-mail.

Every ten minutes, the application server, via the Ethernet, goes out to each data logger, collects the information from 250 meters, and stores it on the data server. Every 20 minutes the data is aggregated by building, cost center and system. All users can access the information via their own PCs using the web server.

Conclusions

JHS has moved from the Stone Age into the Information Age in energy management and measurement. Like cars, JHS now has a speedometer and an odometer on its utilities; providing data on how fast the “car” is going and how far it’s been. This system is still being developed and will probably always continue to be developed as it is used and grows. JHS sees real advantages to gathering real time energy data on one screen in terms of block purchasing and awareness of system problems as they happen.