Cogeneration system for a 57 story tower - One Penn Plaza, New York City
This cogeneration system is two stories in height, weighs 650,000 lbs. One Penn Plaza, is a black monolithic skyscraper next to Madison Square Garden. It not only produces some 6.2 megawatts of electricity - enough to power up to half the 57 floor building on a busy day, but it also siphons off excess steam and uses it to heat and cool the 37 year old skyscraper.
One of the on-site project managers said during erection of the system . . . “For a project this complex, I'm amazed at how well this has gone together!“
Watch the
video of how this project evolved.
Project Highlights:
- Project will offset approximately 50% of the building's electric and 20-30% of its steam requirements.
- 3 x 2.005 kWe Caterpillar 3520C natural gas-fired reciprocating engines generating at 4160V
- 3 x heat recovery steam generators (HRSG's) delivering up to a total of 12,000 lb/h of 185 PSIG (high pressure) steam
- Switchgear, controls and power converters allowing parallel synchronous interconnection with grid
- This unit will be able to attain an 80% efficiency rate.