LOS ANGELES, June 28, 2001 - With energy efficiency playing an increasingly important role in alleviating the state's ongoing energy crisis, Southern California Gas Co. (The Gas Company) today unveiled plans to showcase a new approach to saving energy that combines on-site power generation with an energy-efficient cooling and heating system. At a ground-breaking ceremony for a new $1.8 million Central Energy Plant at its Pico Rivera facility, Gas Company officials said the new plant will save the company $250,000 a year in energy costs through the use of a micro-turbine that generates 75 kilowatts (kW) of electricity and a super-efficient natural gas absorption chiller that provides hot water for space heating and chilled water for cooling.
The Central Energy Plant represents the first energy system in the western United States that will receive co-funding from a new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) program promoting energy efficiency. The new system is expected to be operational by October 2001.
"At The Gas Company, we take energy efficiency and conservation seriously, and encourage our customers to do the same, " said Edwin A. Guiles, chairman of The Gas Company. "Like all businesses, we are looking at ways to reduce our costs to heat and cool our facilities. Through the use of new and exciting natural gas technologies, we will not only significantly reduce our costs but the electricity we don't pull off the grid will be available for others to use."
This year alone, The Gas Company has reduced the amount of electricity used in its facilities by more than 12 percent over last year.
Although the absorption chiller and the micro-turbine offer significant cost savings and environmental advantages on their own, the new DOE program underlines how these two units produce greater efficiencies by working together, Guiles said.
The gas-fired Honeywell micro-turbine, which needs cool inlet air to run at its top efficiency, will receive cool air throughout the year from the absorption chiller. The micro-turbine produces few emissions.
The Broad 330-ton absorption chiller will be partially driven by the waste heat from the micro-turbine. The resulting system will be very high in overall efficiency, reduce electric power needs on hot days and be low in emissions. The chiller will be the first in California manufactured by a division of Broad Air Conditioning, the world's largest manufacturer of gas-absorption air conditioning. Gas-fired absorbers use no chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which damage the earth's ozone layer. The new chiller will replace an electric unit that needed a costly change to a new refrigerant that doesn't contain CFCs.
The Central Energy Plant will replace a 25-year-old system of chiller units, cooling towers and boilers that now provide heating and cooling at three buildings at the Pico Rivera site, which houses the company's engineering analysis center, meter repair shop and other diversified functions.
Neilsen-Dillingham Builders will construct the project, which was designed by a team that included personnel from Sempra Energy, The Gas Company, Loring-Cruz and Donn C. Gilmore and Associates.
The Gas Company and the DOE plan to showcase this project, so others can learn the potential for using an integrated on-site power generation, heating and cooling approach.
Southern California Gas Co. (The Gas Company) is the nation's largest natural gas distribution utility, serving 18 million consumers through 5 million meters. The company's service territory encompasses 23,000 square miles in most of central and Southern California. The Gas Company is a subsidiary of Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE), a Fortune 500 energy services holding company based in San Diego. The Sempra Energy companies' 12,000 employees serve more than 9 million customers in the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, South America and Asia.
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