CHP units rise to university challenge
As part of its plan to deliver year-on-year reduction in CO2 emissions, the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) recently installed two Dachs Mini-CHP units from Baxi SenerTec to generate electricity and provide heat for its Victoria building. The units have been running for nearly a year and have proved so successful that the university is looking for other sites where it can use CHP.
The 4-storey Victoria Building houses the Northern School of Design and includes art studios, offices, cafe and exhibition spaces in a gross floor area of 7453 m2. It was built in 19832, and two atmospheric gas-fired boilers were installed at the time.
By early 2008, these boilers needed replacing. Andrew Pool, a director with building-services consultant BES explains, ‘We originally produced a specification for replacement boilers, but subsequently we were asked to rework the design to incorporate CHP because the FM department felt that would be better for its energy strategy.’
Ruth Taylor, energy and carbon-management at UCLan, had read an article about a Dachs CHP installation. She says, ‘That was the spark. We were interested in CHP because of the variable demands on the site. In the Summer, we don’t have the same number of students, and we needed something small to fit the existing space. The SenerTec units fitted the bill perfectly and were a safe option.’
Because the building’s base heat demand is difficult to predict because of its variable occupancy, BES came up with a design using two Dachs units as lead boilers and six condensing modulating boilers. The design includes space and connection for a third Dachs unit to be dropped in should the heat load demand it in the future.
Andrew Poole says, ‘I had never used Dachs units on a project before, but Senertec provided excellent specification and usage information. The company was proactive in getting the relevant design information across to us so that we could develop the most appropriate scheme for this application.’
The units were installed by James Mercer Group of Preston.
