District Energy - 2007 Fourth Quarter

Industry
News
U.S. University to Rely
on Landfill Gas

The University of New Hampshire (UNH) in Durham, in cooperation with Waste Management of New Hampshire Inc., has launched Eco-Line, a landfill gas project that will pipe enriched and purified gas from Waste Management’s landfill in Rochester, N.H., to the Durham campus. UNH will use landfill gas as its primary energy source.

The renewable, carbon-neutral landfill gas, from Waste Management’s Turnkey Recycling and Environmental Enterprise (TREE) facility in Rochester, will replace commercial natural gas as the primary fuel in UNH’s cogeneration plant, enabling UNH to receive 80 percent to 85 percent of its energy from a renewable source.

Construction is set to begin immediately on a landfill gas processing plant in Rochester that will purify the gas and the 12.7-mile underground pipeline to transport the gas from the plant to the campus. UNH is expected to fuel its cogeneration plant with landfill gas by fall 2008. The estimated project cost, including construction of a second generator at UNH, is $45 million.

The landfill gas will help stabilize the university’s fluctuating energy costs, which have doubled in the last five years and grown at an annual rate of 18. 9 percent. Eco-Line will also have a major impact on UNH’s carbon dioxide emissions. It will reduce the university’s greenhouse gas emissions an estimated 67 percent below 2005 levels and 57 percent below 1990 levels.

Ranked by the U.S. Department of Energy as in the top five percent for energy efficiency among similar colleges and universities, UNH is one of the nation’s leading sustainable universities. It was the first university in the nation to earn the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR rating for seven residence halls and one administrative building.

New Name for Austin
Energy Plant

Austin Energy’s District Cooling Plant 1, the company’s first district energy project,

was recently renamed the Paul Robbins District Cooling Plant after long-time Austin environmental activist Paul Robbins. In June, the Austin City Council voted to rename the plant in Robbins’ honor, commemorating his commitment to conservation and protection of the environment. According to Cliff Braddock, Austin Energy’s director of energy business development, “The Austin community is fortunate to have a citizen visionary like Paul who can see opportunities that can make a difference in the community.”

To locals, Robbins is best known as publisher of the Austin Environmental Directory. During the mid-1990s, he became an advocate for district cooling, and his work led to Austin Energy’s commissioning of a feasibility study with Kattner/FVB District Energy (now FVB Energy). The study indicated that district cooling in downtown Austin could have a significant positive impact on the environment while contributing to the utility’s conservation and demand-side management programs.

The Paul Robbins plant is equipped with two 1,000-ton chillers, three 2,000-ton chillers and a 26,200-ton-hr ice thermal storage system. Since its construction, Austin Energy has subsequently built a second plant, bringing total downtown capacity to 33,000 tons and 76,000 ton-hr of storage – enough to shift nearly 20 MW of electricity demand from on-peak to off-peak hours.

Thermal Chicago Makes
the News

Thermal Chicago Corp.’s district cooling system was featured Aug. 10 in a Fox News Chicago report on keeping city high-rise buildings cool in summer. The report was the first in the television channel’s new series of stories on energy and the environment. Thermal Chicago’s General Manager Dave Bump took the station’s mete-orologist Amy Freeze on a tour of one of the company’s district cooling plants, which includes a 2 million-gal ice thermal storage system, one of the largest in the world.