Healthcare Living Laboratories: Queensland Children’s Hospital (LLHC4)

This hospital Living Laboratory will validate emerging technologies in demand reduction, demand management, renewable energy and enabling technologies.

Hospitals are one of the most energy-intensive commercial building types in Australia. Improving energy productivity and developing appropriate sector-wide key performance measures is challenging because of differences in clinical services, patient activity and floor space use. With rising health care costs and demand, there is a need to optimise high-cost hospital infrastructure. In particular there is a need for (a) control and optimisation strategies that can provide the essential energy services cost effectively; (b) renewable energy supply options that reduce exposure to rising commodity prices; and (c) demand response capability to reduce exposure to peak demand pricing and extreme weather events.

This project establishes a Living Laboratory in a working hospital precinct. It will enable a community of innovators, designers, researchers, practitioners and educators to test and evaluate technologies and practices to deliver greater energy productivity, reduce peak demand and explore innovative options for embedding renewable energy and storage into a hospital campus. It will not only test innovative technologies and processes, but will also evaluate the usefulness of new key performance indicators and metrics that link energy performance (especially peak demand, renewable energy and resilience) to core health services.