A new grant received by Ball Memorial Hospital will be used to cut energy usage and cost.
Ball Memorial Hospital announced Thursday it received a $100,000 grant from the Indiana Department of Energy for the installation of automated building controls throughout its buildings. The project is scheduled to begin upon distribution of the grant and is expected to finish in the summer of 2011.
The controls will allow parts of the building to have their lights turned off on certain times of the day when they are not needed.
Ball Memorial will also install occupancy sensors, like those in Ball State University's buildings that turn lights on when an individual walks into a room and turn lights off when the room is empty. The sensors will also help prevent the excessive use of air conditioning by avoiding light bulbs to emit heat, causing the temperature to rise.
The new building installations will allow Ball Memorial staff to better its services, Mike Knuckles, director of maintenance, said in a statement.
"Being able to more closely monitor the temperature in our patients' rooms allows us to provide better patient care," he said. "It saves us money on utilities, which allows us to take that money and put it back into the hospital to provide better equipment and treatments to continue to give the best quality patient care. That is ultimately the main goal."
In October, Ball Memorial built a green roof on its South Tower. This was the largest green roof in Indiana, with 23,000 feet of vegetation and cutting 10 to 15 percent of energy costs for the South Tower. Ball Memorial has also done other efforts to reduce energy usage, such as removing unnecessary light bulbs and restricting use of personal electrical appliances.
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