Building a power plant under Greenwich Village
October 5, 2011 | Length: 00:03:04
When New York University set out to build a co-gen power plant in the heart of New York City, it was a big engineering challenge. But it was worth the work: the new plant is almost 90% efficient, and will save the school up to $8 million a year on utility bills.
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Transcript
>> Sumi Das: In the heart of New York City, under this peaceful public plaza, sits a state-of-the-art power plant. Financed and operated by New York University, the new co-generation plant produces both electricity and steam. Replacing an oil-fired plant from the 1970s, it's one of the largest private Co-gen plants in the city. Engineer and head of the school's operations department, John Bradley, oversaw the plant's design.
>> John Bradley: If they built this plant in Iowa, it wouldn't have been such an engineering feat, but since it's in the middle of Greenwich Village underground, it was an engineering feat to get it done. We built a big concrete bathtub about 50 feet down and replaced all the equipment. Then we put structural steel in and then we put the roof on, and then we put the park over that.
>> Sumi Das: The old plant generated electricity for seven campus buildings. The new plant powers 22. It also heats and cools 37 buildings and provides them with hot and cold water. The plant's not only more powerful, it's also much cleaner. Air pollution's been cut by 68 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 23 percent. So how does the co-gen plant dramatically increase its output and decrease its environmental impact? New technology allows the plant to be almost 90 percent efficient. Here's how it works. At the core of the plant are two giant turbines, fueled by natural gas. The turbines are housed in massive sound-muffling boxes that make them look like tractor trailers.
>> John Bradley: The gas turbines are essentially jet engines, just like what would hang under the wing of an airplane. But instead of thrust to keep the airplane in the air, our gas turbines produce rotational energy and connected to the end of the gas turbine is an electrical generator that produces five and a half megawatts of power per gas turbine. So one megawatt of power would light approximately 1,500 homes, so you do the math it's a lot of power.
>> Sumi Das: As the turbines work to power the generators, they produce exhaust that's 1200 degree Fahrenheit. In a typical plant, this would be released into the atmosphere.
>> John Bradley: We take that and we boil water, and we make steam. And then we take that steam and we run it through an additional electrical generator and produce another two and a half megawatts of power.
>> Sumi Das: Once the steam has passed through the generator, it's also used to produce hot water and to operate a chiller, which pumps cold water around campus. The new power plant carried a price tag of 125 million dollars, but after producing its own power for just one year, the University predicts it will save five to eight million dollars on utility bills, and as those utility costs increase over the years, so will the annual savings. For SmartPlanet, I'm Sumi Das.