Don’t throw away waste heat! It can chop power bills by 30%
December 1, 2009 by Tom GuayPosted in: Cost Cutting, Latest News & Views, News, recycling
Thanks to the efficiencies of modern turbine technology, a commercial building like a hotel can cut spending on energy by more than 30%.
The environmental benefits for the Four Seasons hotel come from an investment in what’s known as Combined Heat and Power (CHP), which will cut its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% a year.
The benefits gained by CHP systems come from recycling what used to be regarded as waste heat. Now instead of releasing the heat into the atmosphere, CHP systems capture that heat and use it as an energy supply instead of just purchasing more energy from third-party suppliers.
For the Four Seasons in Philadelphia, waste heat is captured and used to heat the hotel’s various water systems, for showers, kitchen, laundry, indoor pool and hot tubs. The three natural-gas fired microturbines on the hotel’s roof capture enough heat to warm 275 homes through an average winter.
EPA promotes CHP through its Combined Heat and Power Partnership program. The benefits of CHP include:
- reducing energy costs
- offsetting capital costs
- protecting revenue streams, and
- guarding against volatile energy prices because users generate their own power .
The agency has also produced a special analysis of how the hotel and casino industries can adopt CHP.
The hotel’s CHP system was supplied by Pennsylvania’s E-Finity Distribution Generation, which is promoting CHP for manufacturing facilities, schools, hospitals, commercial buildings and other large energy users. E-Finity uses microturbines produced by Capstone Turbine.
Tags: combined heat and power, Four Seasons, microturbines, recycling
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December 4th, 2009 at 7:38 am
I would like to know more information about the combined heat and power program.