In the last six years, three severe weather events—Superstorm Sandy and Hurricanes Harvey and Maria—caused widespread damage and left millions of residents without power during and after the storms for a long duration of time. When Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 16, 2017, it was the second-largest recorded power outage in the world. But even smaller storms that produced 4 tornadoes in Connectict in May 2018 left many businesses without power for a week.
Amid the darkness and devastation, cogeneration plants, or Combined Heat and Power (CHP) systems, provided pockets of power, enabling some hospitals, residential buildings, hotels and skilled nursing facilities to continue operating. CHP systems are a critical part of energy infrastructure, especially in the face of severe weather events when the electric grid goes down in hard-hit areas. Running on natural gas, CHP systems can provide back-up power to a building indefinitely, allowing people to shelter in place and businesses to continue to operate.
In addition to being resilient, CHP systems are sustainable. CHP systems simultaneously produce heat and electricity from natural gas, which significantly reduces greenhouse gases. CHP systems capture “waste” heat typically exhausted by power plants and harness this heat back into a building in form of domestic hot water, heating and cooling. By utilizing this heat, operational efficiency for a building is increased from 30% to 85%!
From a technical standpoint, CHP systems from Aegis Energy, EDF Group can cut energy costs in half because of their operational efficiency of 85% and use of natural gas, which is often less expensive than purchased electricity, to create heat and power from a single fuel source. Ultimately, less electricity is purchased from the grid, which reduces cost and provides facilities less exposure to future rate increases.
You do not have to be in the dark as we will gladly illuminate the benefits of CHP for your facility.