Irving Medical Center Deep Energy Audit

Wendel was engaged by Columbia University Irvine Medical Center to investigate current energy & HVAC systems, utility infrastructure, and develop a Clean Energy Master Plan for their campus in Manhattan. The campus includes 14 laboratory, medical and academic facilities. The objective of the master plan was to provide an actional roadmap to a zero-carbon energy system.

Wendel’s team reviewed drawings, interviewed facility and utility staff, surveyed building equipment, energy distribution systems, and central plant equipment. Wendel performed assessments on age and estimated remaining useful life for critical system components.

Wendel worked with the University to develop concepts for both energy conservation retrofits and replacement of existing central plants, utility distribution systems and conversion to a ZERO FOSSIL FUEL ENERGY SYSTEM. The system concepts varied based on the location and interconnection between buildings. In general, the program will replace existing absorption chillers with either electric chillers or heat pumps. Replace existing steam systems with low temperature hot water systems. Replace steam boiler with condensing hot water boiler & heat recovery heat pumps. The heat pump systems will be scalable and over time will interconnect to geothermal well fields, data centers and near-by buildings. This will ultimately phase out the use of fossil fuel boilers. Autoclaves, domestic hot water systems and other process steam loads will be converted to electric based equipment over time.

Wendel’s final deliverable included: utility energy modeling, thermal modeling of individual buildings, preliminary concept drawings, field surveys of equipment, equipment selection, bulletized scope of work, Sankey charts showing before and after energy usage and sources, life cycle cost analysis, financial projections and phasing recommendations over the next 20 years.