News

Statement - energy costs at MBH

Oct 05, 2017

Mildura Base Hospital said the rising costs of energy were significant challenges to the budgetary planning for every large organisation.

MBH director of corporate services Adam Stevenson said the hospital was budgeting for a 22.5% increase in electricity costs however gas costs were predicted to remain constant.

At the consumption end of the equation, MBH was also taking a proactive approach by trying to improve energy efficiency.

“We’ve seen this coming and we’ve taken some substantial initiatives to improve our efficiency to try to insulate ourselves from the impacts,” Mr Stevenson said.

“Obviously, as an essential service, we won’t compromise on safety, so a large proportion of our gas and electricity usage and cost is unavoidable,” he said.

“However, where we can make efficiencies or savings, we have been quite proactive in doing that.”

Preparations are currently underway to install a $450,000 upgrade of the MBH cooling and air conditioning system.

“That was primarily to replace ageing infrastructure to ensure its reliability, but shifting to new technology obviously brings some fairly significant energy efficiency gains as well, which we were also thinking about,” Mr Stevenson said.

“Also over the past 12 to 18 months we’ve completed a full conversion of hospital lighting from standard globes, so now all of our lighting and fixtures operate on energy efficient LED globes, which is creating some energy savings,” he said.