Power Magazine
Summary
When Hurricane Sandy in 2012 knocked out power in Lower Manhattan for nearly a week, New York University’s (NYU’s) Washington Square campus stayed operational because it was not relying on the grid. A 13.4-MW cogeneration plant, commissioned in 2011, was producing the campus’ electricity and steam from a single natural gas feed when ConEd’s 14th Street substation flooded and went down. The plant was already paying for itself before the storm arrived. NYU has reported energy savings of roughly $5 million a year from the system.
Scenes like this are becoming more common, and the technology behind them is not new. Combined heat and power (CHP), or cogeneration, captures the heat that conventional power plants discard and puts it to work. The average fossil-fueled power plant in the U.S. converts only about a third of its fuel into electricity. The rest leaves as heat through cooling towers and exhaust stacks. Another 4% to 5% of what does reach the grid is lost in transmission.
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