As part of this year’s Earth Day activities, automation technology vendor Phoenix Contact “cut the wire” and is now generating its own power at the company’s U.S. headquarters in Middletown, Pa. Following a wire-cutting ceremony to symbolically disconnect the facility from the electric grid, Phoenix Contact USA President Jack Nehlig said, “Earth Day is a great reminder we all need to make smart decisions to help our environment. We realize we have a large energy footprint and have chosen to help our region and the world by making a significant investment to generate our own power in a more environmentally friendly way.”
Representatives from E-Finity and Capstone Turbine Corp., the manufacturer of the CCHP, also took part in the wire cutting ceremony. Other participants included representatives from Gatter & Diehl, Inc., the consulting engineering firm for the construction project, and several local elected officials.
The company installed a new combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) system composed of five 200 kW Capstone microturbines packaged in a single container, a 300-ton exhaust-fired absorption chiller and a 5,000-BTU heat exchanger. It will generate enough electricity to power the headquarters approximately 65 percent of the time.
Doug Ferguson, vice president of Americas Operations Services, said the “clean alternative energy source” provides two additional key benefits: “The system is expected to provide an estimated annual savings of over $300,000 per year; and this additional electricity generation source provides a redundant source of electricity, which will allow our facility to operate in the event that either PP&L or our CCHP system goes out of service.”
The turbines are driven by the thermal dynamics of the facility and can generate up to 1 megawatt of electricity. The system can also heat and/or cool the facility, independent of external sources. As the turbines generate energy, they vent the exhaust heat byproduct through either the building’s absorption chiller or its heat exchanger to regulate the temperatures of the building’s chilled and hot water supplies. That demand will determine how much electricity the system will generate, while reducing the amount of waste Phoenix Contact produces.
The CCHP project also uses many Phoenix Contact products within the control cabinets, including Valueline industrial PCs, Ethernet switches, Visu+ software, I/O, relays, power supplies, surge protection and more.
"I am very pleased to see the commercial/industrial marketplace is recognizing the value that can be gained from utilizing low-cost, abundant natural gas for generating reliable onsite combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP) with Capstone turbines," said Jeff Beiter, managing partner for E-Finity Distributed Generation, the exclusive Mid-Atlantic distributor for Capstone Turbine Corporation, and the system supplier for the project.
The U.S. headquarters includes manufacturing and logistics facilities for North and South America, as well as office space. The installation of the CCHP system comes near the end of a major renovation and expansion that nearly doubles the company’s manufacturing footprint in the U.S. The construction project added 125,000 sq. ft., bringing the facility to nearly 360,000 sq. ft. It also added about 50,000 sq. ft. of office space to better accommodate the local workforce, which has grown from 414 in early 2011 to 522 today.
