In challenging times Clarke Energy’s installations are supporting the resilience of operation of essential services. Combined heat and power plants (CHP) are deployed at the heart of numerous important facilities including hospitals, data centres, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment manufacturing facilities.
INNIO’s gas engines, used as part of Clarke Energy’s combined heat and power plants are typically located close to the site of use. These engines are gas-fuelled, whether that be natural gas or renewable biogas, biomethane or hydrogen, to provide electricity and heat at high efficiency.
Hospitals have need for both electricity and heat for the successful running of the important facilities. Many hospitals now use CHP plants to provide the base-load power needs of the site. Electricity is used for the site’s local load, such as supporting lighting, medical equipment including ventilators and other important local energy users. They also have need for heating, to keep patients warm, for cleaning of bedding and for sterilisation of equipment.
Bartholomews NHS Trust CHP Plant, UK
Medical equipment and pharmaceuticals manufacturing plants are also key users of CHP technology. Often specific facilities do not publicise the usage of onsite CHP plants due to the sensitive nature of some of their work, but high efficiency embedded generation is a key strategy to reducing carbon emissions and improving efficiency.
Data Centres too are starting to recognise the potential for gas engine combined cooling and power (CCP) plants. Data centres rarely have a need for heat, here the challenge is removing heat and cooling the operations. Heat from gas engines can be converted into cold water using absorption chillers. These chillers deliver cooling for the data centres operation and resilience. Citibank was one of the first to deploy this technology support the operation of one of their London data centres, delivering both cost and carbon savings.
Customers can also have the option of running in island mode and with black start capability. I.e. the CHP plant can be disconnected from the grid and operate independently when there is an outage.
Finally delivering resilience is about 24-hour service support and having parts readily available. Clarke Energy has a global network of over 550 service engineers, dedicated to supporting our customer’s operations in challenging times. Clarke Energy has deployed over 240MW of power to hospitals, data centres, healthcare equipment, medical products and pharmaceuticals plants globally.
Clarke Energy has also now supplied ~500MW of power to the peaking sector, helping to support the grid during times of fluctuating demand and supply from intermittent renewables such as wind and solar.
If you would like to find out more about how gas engines can be deployed to help your facility, please contact us for more information.
