Gateway Campus

The Energy Center was built in conjunction with the original hospital project on the Gateway Medical Center campus. It was designed to serve the initial buildings on campus as well as handle future expansions. The Energy Center provides domestic water, fire protection, steam, chilled water, electric and oxygen to all of the buildings. The systems include:

• Multiple chillers totaling 4,000 tons of cooling
• Multiple boilers totaling 1800 BHP of steam
• Multiple emergency generators totaling 4,500KW of power

It was crucial that all of the systems were designed for redundancy so they act as a reliable source to the medical campus at all times. Not only is redundancy important to Deaconess, but so are the ongoing costs of operating an Energy Center. Hafer designed the systems with energy efficiency in mind. One example is boiler stack economizers were provided to capture waste heat to preheat the boiler feed water system. Another example was the tower free cooling heat exchanger and control sequences that utilize outside air temperatures during the winter to provide chilled water to the hospital for critical cooling processes. Maintenance of building systems can become expensive over time if not designed properly. This is why Hafer designed the systems to allow adequate clearances and ease of access to allow the systems to be maintained, continue to operate efficiently and keep the systems up and running while the maintenance is occurring.

By designing the facility with flexibility in mind, the Energy Center has easily been able to expand as the campus has grown. Hafer has designed two expansions since to serve the upcoming projects on campus. It is comforting to Deaconess and its patients that the hospital and other medical offices will always have the necessary infrastructure to function at all times, even in times of natural disaster.