Campus Life

Medical Center honored for sustainability

Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center received two awards for its sustainable practices from the United States Green Building Council Central Pennsylvania (USGBC) on Nov. 30. The Medical Center received the honors at the Forever Green awards ceremony hosted by USGBC Central Pennsylvania at Historic Acres of Hershey in Elizabethtown.

The Medical Center won the Climate Champion award for the Chilled Water Optimization project, which was fully implemented in spring 2017. The project involved an energy-efficient overhaul of the chilled water plant and a new operations methodology. The Medical Center’s Facilities Department implemented the project over two phases. Total annual savings of chilled water optimization project (Phases 1 & 2) are 5,784,040 kWh, or 4,305 metric tons of carbon dioxide. The annual savings equates to the greenhouse gas emissions of 4,709,607 pounds of coal burned.

The University Technology Center, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified building, was honored with the Innovative Project, New Construction award. The University Technology Center features innovative approaches for sustainability, energy efficiency and modular growth, while providing high resiliency for critical applications. In addition to meeting sustainability guidelines, the building had to be visually attractive and complement existing campus aesthetics.

The overall cooling system leverages the use of outside air and evaporative cooling to the degree where mechanical cooling is not used for 86 percent of the year on average. The tested Power Utilization Effectiveness (PUE) ratio of the facility has been established at 1.27, a substantial improvement over the former data center, with a PUE at 2.5, a 96 percent increase in efficiency.

Last Updated December 14, 2017

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