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Posted by Boiled out on January 07, 2005 at 14:38:30:
In Reply to: central plant vs. stand alone boilers posted by Steve on December 29, 2004 at 14:08:02:
: Does anybody know of any case where a central heating plant was shut down and all of the buildings had stand alone boilers(hot water or steam)installed for cost saving purposes. Example: college campuses, bases, etc.
I work in a central heating plant and it is about to happen to us. It has been in the works for a while and they just got the go ahead to proceed. We currently operate 3 hot water boilers serving a large federal complex. These boilers are currently operating in the 86%-87% efficiency range and have flue gas return systems. In their wisdom they have decided to replace these 3 very reliable low maintenance boilers with 18 small packaged units. They are going to use the existing plant but divide into 3 groups these new boilers and put in separate headers to enable getting under the boiler branch requirement for 24/7 manning, pretty slick eh or slimy depending on your point of view. This way they can technically get the plant under the boiler heating surface square footage requiring operators even though the overall boiler square footage will increase with all the new small boilers they will require to meet the divided up load, separate headers as compared to common. The engineering study was not able to justify the replacement of the existing boilers to achieve the desired payback in time. The only way to achieve their goal was to get rid of us and our salaries to meet the payback schedule. Needless to say it is obvious the bean counters are not interested in common sense or efficiencys just their own promotions because you don't have to be a power engineer to see all the inherent flaws in their grand plan.