Energy Recovery for an Energy Company
When Berner Energy Recovery’s manufacturer’s representative, Ed Stephany, received a set of engineering drawings for an HVAC system for a new building on Pittsburgh's North Shore, he was surprised to see that they contained no provision for an energy recovery system. Alert to the fact that such a system can improve indoor air quality while saving substantial amounts of energy annually, Stephany contacted Gordon Collins, vice president of engineering for the project’s mechanical contractor, Ruthrau |Sauer of McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania. Stephany suggested to Ruthrau that they propose integrating an energy recovery component to the building’s principle tenant, Equitable Resources, Inc., a natural gas company.
“I suggested to Ruthrau that we install an energy recovery unit,” Stephany said “When they showed Equitable the price and explained the merit of having an energy recovery system and what the payback would be combined with the fact that Equitable is an energy company, it just made good sense for them to incorporate a unit into the project.”
After seeing the projected fifteen to twenty percent annual energy savings, which amounted to a five to seven year payback for the system, Equitable agreed to add the energy recovery component onto the already planned for HVAC system for the new five-story, 150,000 square foot steel, glass and brick building that would become their corporate headquarters.
Although energy recovery systems almost always make sense for high-occupancy public buildings, Stephany says that each project calls for its own cost/benefit analysis. “An once building is the perfect environment for an energy recovery system. When you have a warehouse with a very low density of people per square foot, an energy recovery sys-tem might not make a lot of sense. But when you start to put people into the environment where the temperature has to be maintained at about seventy-two degrees and the humidity needs to be con-trolled, you have enough energy being generated in the building of which you can recover up to eighty percent and reintroduce it back into the building, you save money.”
Schools and other public buildings benefit from the Berner Energy Recovery Ventilation Systems. School districts are attempting to meet new building codes and government guidelines for indoor air quality and reduce operating costs all at the same time. Several schools in Georgia, Dooly County High School and The Weber School are among those who have installed Berner Energy Recovery Systems. Our patented triangular plenum and TRICOIL® technology bring a number of features and performance benefits to both design engineers and building owners.
In terms of savings, our systems and products can provide you with 50% of free heat in the winter and 15% of free cooling in the summer at peak design conditions.
The result? A dramatic reduction in the building’s air conditioning and heating load.