ASHRAE Technology Award: Texas Hospital Central Plant Redesign PDF

The case study discusses a new 1.1 million ft2 research institute building at Houston Methodist Hospital (HMH) prompted an expansion of its existing central utility plant (CUP). The steam demand on the CUP required operation of the two existing natural gas 60,000 lb/h (7560 g/s) high-pressure steam boilers, leaving the plant without a standby unit. Although the CUP had sufficient chiller capacity, it was deficient in the necessary cooling tower capacity to support operation of all seven of the installed centrifugal chillers simultaneously. The installation of the cogeneration turbine with duct burner and high-pressure steam thermal energy recovery unit makes HMH the only hospital in the Texas Gulf Coast area that can operate during hurricane-type power grid outages. The system incremental cost and estimated energy savings using simple payback had been projected to pay back in 3.5 years or less.