Masonic Village boosts efficiency and slashes emissions with microturbines.
Masonic Village in Elizabethtown, PA, is a sprawling continuing-care retirement community, children’s home, and community service organization that opened in 1910. Today, the 1,400-acre complex serves more than 1,700 residents.
For decades, the complex was driven by a coal-fired plant that burned more than 5,000 tons of coal each year. The antiquated energy system featured steam-driven generators that produced electricity for the entire campus. Even after the campus decommissioned the generators in the 1950s and switched to power from PPL Electric Utilities, it continued to use coal to fuel two 400-horsepower (hp) and one 25-hp Keeler boilers that generated steam distributed through a 4,800-foot-long undergoing piping network. The coal-driven system was an emission hazard and required two people to manually operate and maintain it around the clock for more than 50 years.
“It was very labor-intensive,” says Vince Doyle, power plant operations manager. “Plus, there were a lot of manual tasks we had to do throughout the day. Replacement parts were extremely hard to find because the system was so old. And emissions from the coal were much greater than what we could obtain from current technologies. It was time for a change.”
In 2001, officials at Masonic Village, weary of the campus’ 50-year-old, inefficient coal-fired steam system—and the high emissions associated with burning coal—knew it was time to move to a next-generation technology for their heating and electric needs.
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Photo: Capstone
Masonic Village is a 1,400-acre complex continuing-care retirement community, children’s home, and community service organization
with over 1,700 residents. |
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Photo: Capstone
The installation allowed Masonic Village to reduce its carbon emissions by 2.27 tons per year. |
After conducting deep research and exploring various technologies—including fuel cells—Masonic Village, in 2002, installed five C60 low-emission Capstone MicroTurbines outside the old stone-and-mortar central plant building. Five years later, officials were so pleased with the original microturbine installation that they decided to upgrade it in 2007. A sixth microturbine will be added later this year.
The result: a reduction in the complex’s carbon dioxide emissions of 2,300 tons each year, or 20,430 tons total since installation of the microturbines. In addition, Masonic Village now has an energy system that requires much less maintenance, averages 99% runtime, and proven energy efficiencies that exceed 80%. Finally, the microturbine-based system has nearly doubled the amount of net heat recovered that is used to heat the campus’s domestic water supply and helped reduce overall labor costs.
Low-Emission, High-Efficiency Capstone MicroTurbines Installed
Officials selected the natural gas microturbines because of their low emissions, reliability, and high energy efficiency, especially in a combined heat and power (CHP) application. In the CHP configuration at Masonic Village, the microturbine array produced 300 kW of electricity to supplement utility power, while using 1.5 million BTUs of waste-heat energy for heating needs and the domestic water supply. Energy efficiency for the CHP application exceeded 80%, whereas efficiencies with the old coal-powered energy plant barely exceeded 35%.
“It was such a difference between the old coal-fired plant and the microturbines,” says Doyle. “Like night and day. Runtime for the original set of microturbines exceeded 90%. While the old coal system was reliable, it was very labor-intensive to achieve that reliability. We also significantly reduced our carbon footprint, because emissions were cut so much with the natural gas–fueled microturbines.”
Installation of the microturbine array allowed Masonic Village to reduce its carbon emissions by 2.27 tons per year. Microturbines, which range in size from small, 30-kW units, up to 1-MW power packages, are low-emission and low-maintenance energy systems. Using jet-engine technology as a foundation, Capstone microturbines have only one moving part as part of its patented air-bearing system. Air-bearing technology allows the turbine shaft to rotate on a bed of air, becoming air-cooled and air-lubricated, which mitigates the need for lubricants or antifreeze and significantly minimizes maintenance.
With the first real overhaul—a turbine core rebuild—occurring after 40,000 hours of operation, Doyle and his team only concerned themselves with minor maintenance operations on an infrequently scheduled basis.
For five years, the natural gas microturbines ran nearly all the time, providing electric power to the power plant’s operation. Simultaneously, the units supplied a significant portion of the hot water for most of the campus during the summer. In winter months, hot water from the microturbines augmented the three 12.6-million-BTU Bryan boilers connected to the campus’ central hot-water loop.
Microturbine Improvements and Quick Masonic Village Upgrade in 2007
In the meantime, Capstone’s product-development team in California continuously worked to enhance microturbine technologies. The development team produced its own heat-recovery module integrated into the microturbine cabinet. In addition, the team modified the microturbine to boost electrical output to 65 kW and thermal output to 408,000 BTUs per unit—all while retaining the 80% energy efficiency of the earlier C60 model.
Masonic Village officials, pleased with the performance of the original natural gas C60s, agreed in late 2007 to upgrade the microturbines to the new C65 ICHP microturbines.
“Capstone recommends an engine overhaul every 40,000 hours or every five years, and we were at that point,” says Doyle. “It made sense to upgrade to the C65 ICHP.”
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Photo: Capstone
The upgraded system at Masonic Village nearly doubles the thermal energy output of the original microturbines and has increased the electricity produced. |
Working with local Capstone distributor E-Finity Distributed Generation, the retrofit increased the onsite power plant’s thermal-and-electrical-energy efficiency virtually overnight. With an original output of 300 kW and 1.35 BTUs, Masonic Village increased its electrical efficiency 10% to 325 kW and its thermal output 35% to 2.04 million BTUs in the same space.
“With the new system, we’ve increased the amount of heat recovered to use in our loop,” says Doyle. “The microturbine exhaust enters the heat exchanger at 588 degrees Fahrenheit and produces 191-degree hot water. Without a doubt, the new heat recovery modules have increased efficiency.”
During two days in December 2007, three employees from Capstone and E-Finity upgraded the five microturbines in less than 48 hours, requiring the array to be down for a total of only eight hours.
In addition to the five C65 ICHP microturbines, E-Finity and Capstone also installed the Capstone Service Network to allow the Masonic Village team access to real-time remote monitoring, alarming, and troubleshooting of the power plant via the Internet.
More Efficient Microturbine Array
Masonic Village has seen an overall system efficiency increase to approximately 83%. With Capstone Heat Recovery Modules now integrated and sitting atop each unit (rather than third-party modules alongside the microturbines), the entire system takes up much less space. In addition, the system is quiet, producing only 65 decibels when standing 10 meters away—about the same sound levels of an air-conditioning unit.
The upgraded system at Masonic Village nearly doubles the thermal energy output of the original microturbines and has increased the electricity produced. There’s less equipment in the original footprint, so the space impact is minimal. The return on investment is quick on a project of this caliber because of the increased system efficiency.
“The microturbines have really improved our operation,” says Jeff Gromis, Masonic Village’s facilities engineer. “They run seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and only need maintenance once in awhile. They’ve lowered our labor costs because now, instead of working on the old coal-fired plant, staff can devote time to other important projects. Previously, we had to rebuild the entire coal-powered system each year, which was really labor-intensive.”
When compared to the original coal-fired plant Masonic Village used for more than 90 years, the Capstone installation has drastically reduced carbon emissions an astounding 20,430 tons in nine years. The plant is the equivalent to removing 3,374 cars from the road or planting 4,212 acres of forest.
In 2007, the EPA called Masonic Village’s microturbine CHP installation a success story at the annual meeting of its Combined Heat and Power Partnership.
In May, Masonic Village officials decided to add a sixth Capstone natural gas-fueled C65 ICHP microturbine to the onsite energy system. The additional microturbine, which will be installed later this year, will increase electrical generation of the array to nearly 400 kW, boost thermal output to nearly 2.5 million BTUs per hour, and reduce carbon emissions an addition 2,270 tons a year.