Lighter load should aid Pilgrim’s progress

As HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports, the new facility, designed and built, and now operated by, Cofely, is the central element of a new energy-saving programme under which the United Lincolnshire Hospitals (ULH) NHS Trust aims to reduce carbon emissions across all its hospital sites by 30% over the next five years.

 The ULH NHS Trust began planning a complete overhaul of the existing main boiler plant at the Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, within which some of the existing steam plant was 40 years old, to form a new energy centre, around three years ago, as the key element of a new energy-saving strategy subsequently officially initiated in early 2008. The planned programme also included a “re-configuration” of energy services at another of the Trust’s large acute hospitals, the Grantham and District Hospital in nearby Grantham, with an anticipated annual saving there of 2,000 tonnes of CO2, plus a number of other energy-saving initiatives. These included adjusting the ventilation system at the Pilgrim Hospital to alter air flows and feed tempered air from circulation spaces into naturally ventilated wards, a move itself predicted to save around £40,000 annually. The most notable element, however, was the creation of the Pilgrim Hospital’s new energy centre. The new facility incorporates a new 526 kWe CHP plant, a new 8,650 kg/hour oil-fired packaged steam boiler and refurbished Robey Loos heavy fuel oil shell boiler, and a biomass boiler able to generate some 3,000 kg/hour of steam. The biomass boiler is believed to be an NHS first, in that it has the ability to generate both heat and steam. In all the ULH NHS Trust claims the combination of equipment will enable it to achieve annual carbon savings of some 5,696 tonnes, a 51% reduction. Speaking at the energy centre’s recent official opening was Kevin Thoy, who, as the Trust’s environmental services manager, masterminded, and subsequently spearheaded, the project, explained how the partnership that has proved critical to the new centre’s completion evolved, and how it will function going forward. He began: “In 2008, in line with the NHS Carbon Management Programme, and conscious that the Carbon Reduction Commitment would soon place tough new obligations on large energy users like acute hospitals, we entered into a partnership with Cofely, a leading energy and environmental efficiency services specialist, for it to design, build, and operate for us a new energy centre at the Pilgrim Hospital.”

Tender under PFI rules