The Association for Decentralised Energy
Rochestown Park Hotel in Douglas, Cork has 149 guest bedrooms, a health club, swimming pools, 12 conference and banqueting suites with the capacity to cater for 700 guests. Recent expansion at the hotel, adding 50 new bedrooms, a new bar, restaurant and a larger reception area, has meant that the energy requirements increased significantly and so Centrica Business Solutions was consulted to review its CHP system.
Centrica Business Solutions, in conjunction with its partner, Temp Technology, installed a natural gas trigeneration system. This allowed the hotel to benefit from simultaneously producing electricity and heat with the additional transfer of thermal energy to provide cooling for practical uses.
Heat generated from the CHP was converted using an absorption chiller to provide cold water to cool the building. By adding the absorption chiller into a CHP system the user can increase the equipment’s operational hours, maximising the utilisation of the energy, which is of particular benefit in summer periods, reducing dependence on the more costly electrical air conditioning.
The new trigeneration solution resulted in reduced running costs, with estimated annual energy cost savings of around €115,000 for the hotel.
Payback for the project was approximately two years following the CHP installation, based on the energy savings and an approximate investment of around €240,000.
A reduction of 33% on the hotel’s emissions resulted in a decrease of 278 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of removing 150 cars from nation’s roads each year.
As the Rochestown Park Hotel generates a large amount of its electrical demand on-site, it can rely on a constant supply of electricity, even in the event of grid power outages in the region.
John O' Donovan, Financial Controller, Rochestown Park Hotel, said: "The ability to independently generate electricity on-site, at a cost almost 70% less than grid market costs, gives our business a significantly lower cost base to help us drive profitability."
