Paid advertisement by Rocky Mountain Power.

BD is a global medical technology company operating a manufacturing facility in Sandy, Utah, where they produce and sterilize IV catheters and other medical equipment to support and administer the infusion of medication and other therapies across the U.S. and globally. 

BD has partnered with Rocky Mountain Power’s Wattsmart Business® program for over 20 years. The program helps customers like BD find ways to reduce energy usage through equipment upgrades and behavior changes, while offering incentives to cover some of the costs.

“Originally, as we looked at replacing HVAC equipment or utility equipment in a facility, it was always a-like for-like. By going with the Wattsmart Business program, it helped us to look outside of that box and start to make a replacement with a purpose,” said Eric Wells, the associate director of corporate facilities at BD Sandy.

In recent years, BD has executed various energy-efficient upgrades. Rocky Mountain Power brought in experts from Cascade Energy to find ways to make their processes more efficient. The company upgraded their UV ovens that help sterilize their products, replacing old, less efficient UV ovens. The upgraded ovens use LED technology to reduce energy use and heat output, so that energy-consuming heat exhaust fans could be removed. 

BD received an incentive of over $55,000 for this upgrade and reduced their annual energy consumption by more than 545,000 kilowatt-hours. That is equivalent to charging over 25 million cellphones, according to the EPA Greenhouse Gas Calculator.

In addition to installing the upgraded UV ovens, BD repaired over 100 air leaks in their compressed air systems they use in production activities, helping reduce energy consumption. This measure reduced their annual electricity costs by over $10,000.

Since Rocky Mountain Power and BD have started working together, BD has saved over 13 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, equivalent to powering over 1,400 average homes for a year. From 2014 to 2023 BD has received over $500,000 in bill credit incentives to help offset the costs of the energy-efficient upgrades they’ve completed at their facility.