Case Study: Cogeneration Plant
Auckland District Health Board
Energy Outsourcing Adds Value for Auckland District Health Board with the Cogeneration Plant located at Auckland Hospital.
2007 EECA Awards – Winner, Energy Supplier Award.
Auckland District Health Board derives significant benefits in risk management and energy security from its strategic energy outsourcing partnership with Energy for Industry Ltd.
Underpinning the project was the Board’s decision to centralise hospital services at Grafton and a requirement to upgrade emergency power supply systems. As part of this upgrade project, ADHB converted their boilers from coal to gas to release space for the cogeneration plant, which is housed under a car park, and to reduce emissions.
EFI’s cogeneration solution offered a strategic approach that not only met immediate requirements, but also offered future-proofing capacity and protected the hospital contractually from all the financial and operational risk. In addition $2.5 million avoided capital expenditure costs on an upgrade of emergency power system for the expanded hospital was also avoided by the hospital and able to be deployed for core hospital business.
The cogeneration plant comprises two natural gas fuelled Deutz engines, each of 1.8MWe/2.1MWth capacity and an associated 1.8MWe diesel genset which together provide security of supply to the hospital, should supply from the grid fail.
Energy for Industry Ltd was selected from a group of tenderers after offering a valuable combination of inhouse technical and commercial expertise, experience and innovation coupled with a successful track record on other large scale projects throughout New Zealand.
From the Board’s initial requirements, Energy for Industry developed a proposal, which optimised plant performance in relation to sites stated requirements.
Energy for Industry developed and built the industrial scale co-gen facility at no cost to the ADHB. The plant operates in a 20 year agreement to supply the Auckland City Hospital with base load electricity (3.6 MW net), heat (4.2 MW) and standby power (2.8MW). The electricity produced is equivalent to that of supplying 6000 homes.
In addition, the project afforded the opportunity to negotiate special gas and electricity lines deals, which reduced overall hospital energy costs.
And, there are environmental benefits. Compared with the alternative; production of heat from gas fired boilers and sourcing electricity from the grid, the cogeneration plant improves the overall efficiency of conversion of gas to electricity and heat by 50% (from 50% to 77%), and CO2 emissions will be reduced by 200,000 tonnes over the life of the plant.
Energy for Industry’s involvement means that the hospital can get on with core business, health care while leveraging the breadth of skills and resources of EFI as specialist managers of energy plant, utilities and optimization.
