Where there’s heat, there’s environmentally-friendly power – providing there are also tiny turbines.
Mariah Energy Corp. in Calgary has teamed up with the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology to install two natural gas-fired micro-turbines on SAIT’s campus in the city’s northwest.
The vending machine-sized “clean heat and power” (CHP) systems provide an energy-efficient, onsite source of heat and power for SAIT’s Olympic-sized swimming pool and the building that houses it.
SAIT students pursuing careers in the electrical power industry will also get hands-on experience with the alternative energy system, as part of studies offered in the school’s TransAlta epiCentre (epi stands for electrical power industry).
“It’s worth it because of the educational component,” SAIT spokesman Larry Lalonde says of the new CHP system.
“But it should also save us money, too. And that’s just because it’s a more efficient way of providing heat and power to the pool.”
Richard Adamson, senior vice-president of engineering at Mariah Energy, says the two micro-turbines together produce 60 kilowatts of electricity to light and power the building housing the pool.
Exhaust heat from the two turbines is also captured onsite and used to warm water in the 35-metre salt-water pool. SAIT expects to realize energy savings from not having to pipe steam across campus from its main heating plant to heat the pool, or transmit electricity to the pool building.
Mariah Energy installed the system at no cost as a retrofit project. SAIT agreed to buy the heat and power generated for a minimum five years.
The CHP system will reduce SAIT’s emissions of carbon dioxide – the greenhouse gas blamed for global warming – by about 350 tonnes per year, says Mariah Energy president and chief executive Paul Liddy. Emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxide also will decline about 1.4 tonnes annually.
Mariah Energy has several other CHP projects, using micro-turbines made by Capstone Turbine Corp. of California, in the works.
