Tag Archive for "Clean Energy"

Posts Tagged ‘Clean Energy’

Combined Heat and Power Plant at Fort Bragg Wins 2012 EPA CHP Award

Posted on: February 8th, 2012 by shannon No Comments

Fort Bragg was honored with a US EPA Energy Star CHP Award on Tuesday, February 8^th for its 5 megawatt combined heat and power (CHP) plant. This award, presented at the International District Energy Association’s 25^th annual Campus Energy Conference, recognizes the high energy and environmental performance of this CHP project. The facility, which began operation in 2004, provides the US Army’s 82^nd Airborne Division with an efficient and reliable source of power, heating and cooling. The heart of the system is a natural gas fueled combustion turbine generator with heat recovery boiler, that together operate twice as efficiently as a central utility plant, saving the base an estimated $1 million per year in energy costs.

The use of combined heat and power systems is an important means to increase the efficiency of electricity production, in which the heat is normally exhausted as waste. CHP plants like Fort Bragg’s generate electricity onsite and capture the resulting heat, which in this case is used to produce steam or chilled water in an absorption chiller. The steam and chilled water is distributed to the base through a district energy system, an underground piping network that connects multiple buildings to a central plant. A total of 67 buildings are served by the Fort Bragg system, to the benefit of more than 10,000 soldiers, family members and base employees.

The use of CHP at Fort Bragg also has a significant impact on the base’s emissions, avoiding an estimated 12,300 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year, equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of 4,036 cars.

The Department of Defense and the US Army have developed strategic plans for increased energy security and independence, which Fort Bragg installation energy management professionals are implementing through the use of a combination of technologies that include onsite CHP, energy efficiency and renewable energy resources. Ultimately, using more CHP as a constantly available resource in conjunction with available renewable energy resources, the base may generate as much power as it uses, with capability to operate as a secure and independent power island, called a microgrid.

The North Carolina Solar Center, housed at North Carolina State University, operates US Department of Energy Southeast Clean Energy Application Center (CEAC) as a key part of its mission to advance the use of clean power and renewable energy technologies such as CHP. The US Department of Energy Southeast Clean Energy Application Center (CEAC) assists private and public sector entities to identify and develop the opportunities that exist for energy and cost savings through the application of combined heat and power, district energy and waste heat recovery technologies. Organizations that use CHP and district energy in North Carolina include the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University, which is currently building an 11 megawatt CHP plant that will serve its campus.

www.ncsc.ncsu.edu

www.southeastcleanenergy.org

www.districtenergy.org

www.epa.gov/chp/public-recognition/current_winners.html

Electric plants shift from coal to natural gas

Posted on: January 17th, 2012 by shannon No Comments

PITTSBURGH — The huge, belching smokestacks of electric power plants have long symbolized air pollution woes. But a shift is under way: More and more electric plants around the nation are being fueled by natural gas, which is far cleaner than coal, the traditional fuel.

The most optimistic projections describe an abundant domestic energy source that will create enormous numbers of jobs and lead to cleaner skies.

Nationwide, the electricity generated by gas-fired plants has risen by more than 50 percent over the last decade, while coal-fired generation has declined slightly. The gas plants generated about 600 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2000 and 981 billion hours in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency.
During the same period coal generation declined from 1,966 billion hours to 1,850 billion hours, while hydroelectric and nuclear generation stayed about the same. The figures include electricity use by consumers and industry.

Nationwide, EIA said natural gas use for power generation rose 7 percent between 2009 and 2010. That’s about 515 billion cubic feet. The biggest jumps were in the Southeast, with use rising 24 percent in North Carolina, 18 percent in Virginia and 15 percent in South Carolina.

“Most of the people I know in the electric power industry are building natural gas” plants, said Jay Apt, a professor of technology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. That’s because of low prices over the last few years and the relatively low cost of building such plants, compared with coal-fired or nuclear.

But Apt cautions that the trend could stall because the basics of supply and demand mean that if too many plants embrace cheap gas, it won’t stay cheap.

“The surest route to $6 or $8 gas is for everybody to plan on $4 gas,” Apt said, and if prices do rise, coal will again be the most cost-effective fuel. Natural gas is priced per million BTU.
Apt noted that there was a “huge building boom” in natural gas plants from the late 1990s to 2004, because utilities thought they would get rich from the combination of cheap fuel and plants that were highly efficient and relatively cheap to build. There were predictions that prices would stay low over the long term, too.

But natural gas prices spiked, and the new gas-fired plants around the nation stayed idle much of the time. That trend was also driven by another irony: The gas-fired plants are easier to start and stop compared with coal or nuclear, so many utilities used them just for peak electric demand periods.

Still, history may not repeat itself because of the huge surge in supply from Marcellus Shale gas drilling. Vast gas deposits that previously couldn’t be extracted economically are now being tapped using new technologies. Instead of drilling straight down, companies can drill horizontally and follow seams of gas for a mile or more deep underground. Then the drillers use hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to free the gas from the relatively dense shale rock.

That’s led to environmental concerns from some residents, scientists and regulators who feel there are too many unknowns in the process, along with an undisputed boom in production that’s brought great wealth to some landowners, and a surge of jobs.

Some companies clearly believe the switch to natural gas plants makes long-term sense.

Sunbury Generation LP in central Pennsylvania plans to close five of its six coal-fired generators and replace them with two natural gas-fired turbines by 2015, the Daily Item reported last month.

But some companies are deciding not to switch fuels.

The owners of the Homer City Generating Station in western Pennsylvania, the state’s second-largest coal plant, plan to add $700 million in pollution control equipment to keep the 40-year-old plant running and in compliance with clean air laws.

Natural gas-fired power plants are “orders of magnitude cleaner” than coal plants, said Jan Jarrett, president of the PennFuture environmental group.

Jarrett said PennFuture wants coal-fired units retired and replaced by gas-fired, at least for the short term.

“There’s no way that we can scale up wind and solar to meet the demands over the near future,” she said. “Gas itself is a much cleaner burning fuel that can help clean up our air.”

But Apt sees a slow, moderate shift.

“My sense is you’ll get small changes here,” he said, since the current low natural gas prices are attracting market demand from around the world.

There are already federal permits for 3 trillion cubic feet per year of natural gas exports, Apt said.

“Will we export that bounty, and if we do, will that drive up U.S. prices,” he said. Natural gas sells for about $8 in Europe and $14 in Japan, but less than $4 here.

“They’re not going to tear down the coal plants, because they’ve seen this movie before,” Apt said of electric companies. “They will mothball those plants and start up the coal plants again” if natural gas prices rise.

By KEVIN BEGOS – Associated Press

District Energy and CHP Webinar – 11/17 at 1pm EST

Posted on: November 17th, 2011 by shannon

District Energy and CHP: Valuable Infrastructure for Sustainable Communities

Thursday, November 17, 2011 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST

The North Carolina Solar Center manages the US Department of Energy’s Southeast Clean Energy Application Center, which promotes deployment of highly efficient power and heat generation technologies. Our areas of work include Combined Heat and Power (CHP), District Energy and Waste Heat to Power. The Center is producing a webinar on District Energy and CHP, which is free to attend live or may be viewed later via a recording posted at the Southeast Clean Energy Application Center’s website. www.southeastcleanenergy.org.

As cities, campuses and communities evolve to support denser populations with growing energy needs, traditional energy paradigms are giving way to cleaner, more efficient solutions like district energy systems. Although early investments in district energy and combined heat and power first took shape under Thomas Edison in Manhattan in the 1870’s, today’s district energy systems deliver very high reliability, reduced emissions, enhanced energy security through fuel flexibility, and tremendous economic advantages due to fuel efficiencies reaching toward 90%.

As population density climbs, we can no longer afford to simply hang all the load on the electricity grid. Thermal energy networks for heating and cooling cities or campuses can utilize surplus heat from power plants, or from waste to energy or from renewable sources like biomass, landfill gas, or geothermal. Natural sources of cooling like oceans, lakes and rivers can provide clean, abundant and affordable renewable district cooling to remove expensive peak demand from the wires and avoid emissions due to power generation.

In fact, in a May 2011 International Energy Agency report, heat was found to be the primary end use energy at 37% in OECD countries and at 47% globally, more than transport and electricity generation combined. To develop more sustainable cities and communities, infrastructure investment in thermal energy is critically important.

This briefing will provide an overview of the emergence of district energy in North America and discuss two cases: an award-winning and highly efficient CHP district energy system at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the private/public partnership investment in district heating and cooling for downtown Nashville, TN.
Speakers:
Robert Thornton – President, IDEA
Ray DuBose – Director, Energy Services at UNC-Chapel Hill
Harry Ragsdale – President, Thermal Engineering Group, Inc
Host: Isaac Panzarella, Director, US DOE Southeast Clean Energy Application Center