The energy centre at the University of Liverpool is situated in the heart of a 90 acre site in the city centre of Liverpool. The combined heat and power (CHP) plant provides electricity and heat to the whole campus of around 30,000 students and 5,000 staff.
The University of Liverpool has owned and operated a CHP plant since 1986 and the campus originally generated its required power utilising gas turbines. The energy management team at the campus planned to carry out a major feasibility study, with a view of updating the old turbines. Following an in depth study, the decision was made to move the plants location, build a new boiler house and install a gas engine.
Following a tender process, Clarke Energy was contracted to supply engineer, install and maintain a Jenbacher J620, 3.4MWe gas engine. The engine was commissioned in 2009 and currently provides a base-load electricity supply along with heat for the whole of the university campus. Since the engine was commissioned it has run in excess of 8,000 hours per year and provided high levels of availability in excess of 92%, exceeding contracts demand.
A complete overhaul of the engine was completed in December 2017 by Clarke Energy service team, which was scheduled once the engine had reached 60k hours of operation.
“Since the engine began running in 2009 we have built up a good working relationship both with the maintenance team on site and the Clarke Energy management team and look forward to many more operating years of this engine”.
Peter Birch, Energy Manager
A full scheduled engine overhaul was completed after 60,000 hours of operation
