Jan 18 2011
Kaiser Permanente, a health care providing company from USA, declared that its Medical Center at Santa Clara has gone green with the installation of a solar system and has become one among the select few health care centers that generates and uses considerable amount of solar power.
The company has entered in to an accord in March last year with Recurrent Energy, a San Francisco, California-based utility and commercial level solar energy projects formulating and producing company, to install solar power systems to all its 15 health care facilities located in California. Each facility will deploy 1 MW solar power generating facility and the project is anticipated to become complete by the end of 2011. The 1 MW solar power installations at its Santa Clara facility will generate enough power to meet approximately 8.5% requirements of its medical centers power usage. The power generated from the facility can be conveniently utilized to power over 136 homes for a year. Recurrent Energy will invest, own and operate the currently installed and proposed installation of solar system at all the health care facilities. Kaiser Permanente has entered into a power purchase agreement with Recurrent Energy to buy the generated power from the systems and will retain the rights to own the renewable energy credits earned by the solar projects.
In addition to its use of renewable energy power sources, the health care facility is also focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and use of unsafe chemicals and promotes the use of sustainable food. The green initiatives will allow the company to save over $10 million per year and cut down its use of fossil fuel energy. The company also has plans to construct a new 6.7 million square facility within the next seven years incorporating a sustainable design and energy saving features.
Source: http://www.kaiserpermanente.org/