Renewables-based designs are tapping federal dollars to slim-down on utility gas and electricity usage, 40–90%.
Lending in disarray, an economy in recession, natural gas rates in a free-fall—obviously 2009 was not the year for buying energy-efficient retrofits for onsite power, HVAC … or spending much on anything else.
Actually, although that situation was certainly true at first, the market for things energy conservation related began “ramping up pretty markedly” in the summer, reports Ron Blagus, who is energy market director for Honeywell Building Solutions, near Minneapolis, MN.
This turnabout came, thanks to a number of fortunate developments—mainly, federal government largesse, turbo-charged with passage last spring of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Funding and commitments began pumping into markets by mid-year and soon began launching HVAC projects all over the country, especially for municipalities and counties and especially for those willing to convert to renewables-based onsite power.
Michael T. Loth, director for solutions marketing and strategy at Milwaukee, WI-based Johnson Controls, explains that the Recovery Act produced “a number of funding vehicles … designed to create efficiency projects, including HVAC renovations … lighting improvements, renewable energy, and central plant applications.” Johnson Controls’ business encompasses all of these, nationwide.
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Photo: Hannaford Brothers Co.
Ground-source heat pumps provide heating and cooling, ductwork captures warm air from refrigeration chillers to circulate storewide, and a rooftop solar photovoltaic array furnishes the electricity. |
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Photo: Hannaford Brothers Co.
When it opened in mid-2009, Hannaford received platinum LEED certification. |
A prime funding vehicle has been the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program. Created in 2007, it remained unfunded until ARRA came along rather serendipitously, two years after the fact, to pour in about $3.2 billion. Payouts were authorized as direct allocations, on a per-capita proportional basis, “to any municipality or county with a population above 100,000,” says Loth.
A simple six-question grant application has delivered money quickly, “for anything from school districts to private-sector companies … either to spend the money on their own buildings or to set up programs—all with an eye towards promoting energy efficiency,” says Loth.
Another money stream is channeled to state-level programs, and revolving fund accounting structures suggest to him that the flow of investment capital could become steady and long-term.
The most fund worthy projects are energy and HVAC ones linked specifically to renewable energy. These yield not only a practical return on investment, but for cities, desirable political symbolism for green community constituencies. As of late September 2009, 973 US mayors had signed the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement; this obligates them to lowering carbon footprints—a noble aim that they can now begin to accomplish, thanks to newly arrived federal monetary help.
Concurrently, too, throughout the decade, state and federal governments and utilities have incentivized renewable and energy-conserving projects. Wind and solar projects, in particular, have been mushrooming around the nation at 10%-plus growth annually this decade; solar photovoltaic (PV) alone soared 56% higher in 2007, according to the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century.
Beginning that year, too, notes Blagus, Honeywell’s renewables-based retrofitting—consisting of solar PV, solar thermal, geothermal, wind, biomass thermal, and biomass electric—“has been the biggest growth in our energy business.”
In this regard, he points out, there’s been a kind of battle going among renewable resource candidates. “Solar photovoltaic always comes to everybody’s mind first,” but this thinking, he says, is too limiting and confining. So, in June 2008, the firm introduced a systematic method for analyzing the full gamut of renewables, specific to any given locality. Variables, like fuel availability, heating and cooling loads, utility rates, current rebates, and tax incentives, are factored together. The resulting recommendation often suggests that other non-solar energy inputs, and often multiple solutions, make business sense.
A couple of recent cases illustrate:
In 2009, geothermal heat pumps were installed at public housing projects in Denver and Pittsburgh to reduce reliance on natural gas. In the latter city, a $25.1-million investment in efficiency retrofits matched with geothermal got underway. Geothermal wells the length of football field were dug; they’re now negating the cost of about $800,000 a year, formerly spent on gas, and eliminating the need to replace old boiler plants. All told, such measures are saving the Housing Authority about $3.2 million annually. This is guaranteed for 12 years. 
In mid-2009, the City of Dayton, OH, signed an energy savings contract that augments 12 city sites—a police station, the City Hall, a garage, business offices, etc.—with high-efficiency rooftop cooling units, replacement HVAC components, a lot of controls, new power-saving lighting, weather seals, etc. Even city traffic signals were re-socketed with light-emitting diodes.
The total outlay of $3.2 million will yield a guaranteed 30% or more in savings—about $420,000 annually. Over the 10-year contract, this repays the investment without raising taxes or using other city dollars.
Here are three projects, serving as more unusual examples of slimming-down HVAC power consumption and switching to healthier renewable “diets.” In each, not only were carbon footprints lightened, but rapid payback is also likely.
“Biggest Loser” 1: Renewable Marketing
Hannaford Bros. Co., a chain of grocery stores in Maine, listened to all the talk of climate change and ruinous carbon emissions, and decided to make the effort to optimize green and renewable in one model grocery store. The result: a prototype loaded with engineering, which probably distinguish this store as the single most energy-efficient modern grocery anywhere.
Its grand opening in Augusta came in mid-2009, by which time it had already won the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) platinum certification.
Starting at the top, solar power is captured by a PV rooftop that yields 41 kW; and it is grid-interconnected.
Down below on the HVAC side, wafting out the backs of every refrigeration coil or warm exhaust vent storewide, 100% of rejection heat is captured for reuse.
“That’s kind of novel,” observes Harrison Horning, director of energy and facility services for Hannaford. In Maine’s cold climate, “There are days and hours when we want every Btu we can get,” he adds.
As it turns out, perhaps surprisingly, there’s actually enough warmth blowing from these condensers and sources to supply about 90% or more of space-heating needs throughout the store.
But just in case the frigid winters become too severe, supplemental warmth can be piped in from a number of strategically placed ground source heat pumps (GSHPs).
In summertime, Maine also gets a few hot humid hours, he notes, and so the GSHP can carry the HVAC workload year-round. These “distributed heat pumps” are positioned around the store—in the office suite, a computer room, and a vestibule—along with a geothermal unit to condition all the air coming from outside. Horning acknowledges that the multi-component concept is rather unusual, but says, “When we put it all together it made sense.”
The geothermal plant, especially, turns out to be “a very efficient form of cooling and dehumidifying outside air in those summer hours,” he adds. And in winter, “That same outside air needs to be tempered before it comes into the space, and so we use the geothermal as well.”
Even the desktop computers’ exhaust goes into the ducts, to help keep occupants warm. Most of the cooling is handled in this “distributed” way too, with some supplemental conventional chilling added near the checkout area.
All in all, says Horning, the renewable-energy design theoretically should eliminate the need for natural gas entirely, either for water or space heating—“which,” he says with some satisfaction, “is quite an accomplishment in this climate.”
Cost-wise, and comparatively with conventional systems, the total of this green-and-renewable strategy adds a premium of about 20% to 25%—admittedly a hit on the budget. But, given the virtual elimination of a monthly gas bill for the store’s life, payback should come reasonably soon.
Also, the price for meeting specific criteria to win the highest-possible LEED plaque added a chunk. “There’s a reason they call it ‘Platinum,’” jokes Horning. He also discovered that the costs associated with attaining successively higher certifications “are exponentially more expensive.”
The most important of many takeaways from this experience, he says, “can be applied to every new store we build for the next five or 10 years,” and several innovations—like reclaiming refrigeration heat—can be retrofitted on existing ones.
Horning sums up: “When you pause and really open your mind, and bring more people into the process upfront, you can learn a lot. And what we learned can be carried forward in a lot of different ways.”
“Biggest Loser” 2: Picking up Steam
A gas-less grocery running mostly on renewables is impressive, but try this one: an all-renewables-, all-reusable- (e.g., solar-thermal-) powered industrial HVAC plant.
This outcome is one of the theoretical configurations that is touted by a firm called DuCool, which was newly arrived in the US from abroad in 2009, after it reportedly has been building plants for three years in the Far East and Europe.
DuCool’s proprietary design combines solar thermal, solar PV, GSHPs, and, if need be, conventional power, to cool, heat, and dehumidify.
In accomplishing what it touts as an approximately 45% savings in plant energy usage, compared to conventional technology, two design elements are the keys, explains DuCool’s vice president of business development, Mooki Talbi.
First: A proprietary liquid desiccant for dehumidification and air conditioning; an embedded compressor heats and cools this.
Second: Low-grade waste heat, 135°F to 200°F maximum, should be present to capture and be used for dehumidification. Potential sources for this can be found at many sites, such as from compressors, steam boilers, process heat, refrigeration exhaust, and even solar thermal, he notes.
DuCool’s original plant and design, some years ago, powered the desiccant charge-discharge cycle with conventional electricity; next, the company devised more aggressive kilowatt-shedding by adding solar panels and a geothermal component, to reduce the use of grid power.
Most recently, in May 2009, the company came out with a hybrid; this enables using nature’s solar energy during daily sunshine, complemented by grid power any time. An integrated heat pump backs up the package.
Being only newly introduced, DuCool has very few working applications to show yet, says Talbi; several, though, were scheduled for commissioning in late 2009, including two combination cogen and solar plants.
The firm’s primary working showcase site to date—its “Biggest Loser”—is the TönniesFleisch meat-processing plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Germany, commissioned in mid-2009.
According to Talbi and DuCool promotional literature, the meat plant’s main driver, in the decision to go with this untried, quasi-experimental technology, was the meat-processors’ steamy ambience. Here, a feasibility study proposing a conventional air conditioner that could make this steam-room-like workplace tolerable, indicated a need for cooling the air to about 37°F, then reheating it to 61°F and 40% relative humidity, for comfort. Volume-wise, that would mean 30,000 cubic meters per hour. In other words: Given extraordinary cooling and dehumidification loads, it’s quite an electricity-intensive proposition.
But the alternative and very novel technology offered by the newcomer sounded intriguing: DuCool proposed using waste heat that rolls off some boilers; then, combine this with the piping of other hot and cold water already available in other plant processes; these, then, are typical of the kinds sources DuCool can harness for its energy conversion technology. Any such sources, says Talbi—such as “water from a cooling tower, from a geothermal well, a river”—can be captured and reused in the plant’s proprietary desiccant cycle to make dry, cool air.
A total of six modular plant units (which come in two sizes) were installed, along with one small post-treatment air-handling unit. Combined, the loads worked out to a fraction of the size that was spec’d in the study based on conventional AC.
Net savings?
Another “big loser:” Power loads were slimmed down by a sleek 43%—a nice figure, worth $231,000-plus annually. Payback should come, says the company, within one-and-a-half years.
Also, as byproducts, the desiccant culls solid particles, about 80% of those sized above 5 microns; and the temperature and humidity can be controlled independently, unlike the single set-point limitation imposed by conventional air-conditioners.
Relative first costs for the DuCool plant are “much higher,” says Talbi, declining to be more specific; but the difference can be offset, he suggests, by taking advantage of a 30% tax credit allowed for solar space cooling, and accelerated depreciation 50% bonus in 2009; and by many rebate incentives that can come into play state by state.
This funding—combined with the above-noted nearly 50% energy savings—should enable the cost-difference to be made up, in most cases, within one to three years: “Energy savings are significant and therefore the return is also very quick,” he says.
The exceptional performance claims are reported in a DuCool press release, which, unfortunately, at press time could not be confirmed at the newly commissioned plant. However, Talbi states that an independent laboratory assessment, done by Germany’s major testing laboratory, was recently issued for a second proposed implementation, at a hotel. This report validates DuCool technology savings of about 45%, versus conventional plants, Talbi says. At this writing the report was not yet available in English, but it is being translated and should be posted soon.
“Biggest Loser” 3: Manhattan Icon Makeover
Once known as the world’s tallest, the Empire State Building now aims to be the planet’s most extreme energy-saving retrofit case-study and “biggest loser,” serving as a replicable model demonstrating how the analysis and decision-making steps should proceed.
Toward this end, the building’s owner, Anthony E. Malkin of the Empire State Building Company, invited like-minded collaboration from the Clinton Climate Initiative, Rocky Mountain Institute, Jones Lang LaSalle, and others, to sit in on design and engineering meetings seeking to devise “the first comprehensive approach that integrates many steps to use energy more productively,” a prepared statement from Malkin says.
In determining what specific efficiency measures to undertake, the stakeholders group went through “a very rigorous exercise of identifying every potential improvement—there were over 60—that could be accomplished through existing technology,” reports Malkin. “We then computed the theoretical minimum energy that the Empire State Building could consume; if we implemented everything, how little energy could the building actually consume?”
Johnson Controls Inc. was chosen as the primary contractor and design coordinator, and Loth—whose division is handling the work—observes that this job “appears to be the largest commercial building retrofit in North America” to date, and also, from a technical standpoint, “It’s a very interesting project.”
Though of course HVAC renovations are integral to it, the main trimming-down will come from re-glazing 6,500 creaky, drafty, single-pane windows. For decades, these have permitted heating and cooling pass through the cracks like so many sieves. During an 18-month re-glazing campaign begun in 2009 and due to be completed in 2010, every single one will be sandwiched into airtight triple panes and fitted with low-E tinted components, Loth indicates.
“We’re building a littler mini production plant” on the site, to do this, he adds. “The sheer size of this and number of tenants—over 1,000—presents a challenge,” which will take several years to complete.
Along with this insulating fenestration, other elements include providing individualized tenant-operable lighting controls and power management that tenants can tweak and fiddle with, for efficiency, via a Web interface.
As for HVAC and building energy management elements: Major upgrades include putting insulation behind radiators; adding building-wide HVAC control and sub-metering; and providing occupant-controllable ventilation.
One unusual element is the plan to refurbish the central chiller plant by essentially keeping the existing ducting and shell parts intact, while gutting the innards and replacing with new load sensors and controls, variable speed fans and air-handlers.
Total investment: about $20 million.
When it’s all done in a few years, the building should tip the energy-scales at about 38% lighter. This will be worth about $4.4 million annually, enabling payback on the glazing portion in about three years. A LEED-EB (Existing Building) gold certification is in the works.
Biomass Power; Emissions Trading?
In June, the American Clean Energy and Security Act squeaked through the House by a mere seven votes, and landed in Senate. If it passes it will not only reshape US energy markets radically, retrofitting and all—in an epoch-making change—but, with its proviso to build a nationwide, rent-seeking “smart” grid, it will likely “retrofit” US ratepayers’ wallets too. President Barack Obama himself has approvingly stated that the US electricity rates will thereafter “skyrocket;” but this outcome is deemed desirable, because it will juice markets to scramble for more green renewables and conservation measures. Green. As in lucrative.
In any case, the outlook for future HVAC-related power generation and contracting, at this writing, is certainly good-to-great.
Also directly in view, both Loth and Blagus note that onsite biomass gasification plants seem to be coming on strong, for combined power generation and heating. College campuses in particular are eager to showcase such cutting-edge, environmentally responsible technologies.
In late summer 2009, for example, at the University of South Carolina, a biomass-based gasification plant was set for commissioning, to be, says Loth, “the first of its kind in the US,” referring to a specific gasification technology. It’ll supply about 85% of the school’s steam needs and 15% of its electricity. For feedstock, waste wood gets delivered from a nearby International Paper plant.
Blagus comments, too: “We've seen pretty strong growth in biomass thermal projects. We’ve installed a couple of substantially large geothermal projects in the last couple of years and wind project that have been very successful.”
If pending ACESA or similar cap-and-trade regulation passes, the money raised in these regulated emissions markets will turn open the taps into even more such ventures and, Blagus predicts, “We’re going to see a lot of our customers who use a lot of natural gas or coal … switch over to biomass,” to take advantage of emissions credits.
Not only regulatory changes like these—probably coming right ahead (if not passed already by early 2010)—but still-fresh memories of gyrating, unpredictable energy markets, will spur customers to consider any measures that promise to stabilize energy prices.
All in all, he’s finding, “We are very bullish on 2010.”
Note from the Author:
In the above article, with regards to the package from DuCool Inc. called the DuHybrid, when describing it, I made a couple of errors which I would now like to fix. I also wish to add some important information that I received after press time.
First, as the product name “DuHybrid” suggests, it uses a combination of energy sources, including both renewable and conventional—thereby giving a plant owner the advantage of full flexibility: When renewable resources are adequate for power, they can be optimized, but if not, the plant can revert to conventional electricity and water loops, or mix all, in combination. This complete versatility was perhaps not adequately emphasized in my original portrayal.
Next, regarding the integrated renewable energy sources themselves, there are a couple of corrections. As originally reported, solar thermal is one of the typical resources, but solar photovoltaic is not, as was mistakenly suggested. Also, the system uses what are correctly described as open- or closed-loop geothermal wells, rather than ground-source heat pumps.
Now, as for the new information to report: Although the DuHybrid is very new, and at the time of writing about it, only one application was going, so that no corroboration of performance was available, I should have noted that the underlying technologies are proven nonetheless, in other DuCool systems. The DuHybrid renewable-energy plant integrates several components that have been used, to date, at hundreds of conventionally powered DuCool installations in Europe and Asia. These fully prove the key technology concept. After the magazine’s publication, I did receive statements from several DuCool clients confirming the good performance of DuCool’s proprietary liquid desiccant, which is the key technology for tapping low-grade waste heat as a renewable resource. So, my description of the system as ‘quasi-experiment’ was not accurate. The technology reportedly works quite well, as confirmed by a major European independent testing laboratory and by several clients. Although DuCool is newly arrived in the US, it is well established abroad.