April’s Meeting
Date: Monday April 16th, 2007
Theme: STUDENT NIGHT
Tour: PNC Park and NRG Thermal Energy Center
Time: 5:30 pm to 6:15 pm – Tour of NRG Thermal
6:30 pm to 7:30 pm – Dinner Buffet
7:30-8:00- Tour of PNC Park
Location: Meet us in front of the Control Room Door on the western side of Allegheny
Commons. A map shall be included in the e-newsletter.
Price: $30 ASHRAE Member & RSVP / $35 Non-member or Walk-in / $0 Students
RSVP: to Karen Boyle at 412-922-5300 (fax 412-922-0208)
More about the Tours:
PNC Park, which opened in 2001, was part of the most recent revitalization of Pittsburgh. The home of the Pittsburgh Pirates is continually ranked among the top ballparks in major league baseball. The tour will include the mechanical systems of the facility including the chilled and hot water distribution, air distribution, and building automation systems. The tour will also take us through some of the other facilities in the park including the luxury boxes, clubhouse and training facilities.
The tour of PNC Park will also include a tour of NRG Thermal LLC’s, Pittsburgh Energy Center, district heating and cooling plant located beside the North Side Federal Street Post Office at 111 Allegheny South Commons. The plant serves PNC Park, Allegheny General Hospital, Community College of Allegheny County, Allegheny Center, Andy Warhol Museum, Carnegie Science Center as well as many other north side buildings. It can produce 12,400 tons of cooling and 240,000 lbs. of steam distributed through an extensive underground piping system. Steam is used for heating as well as to power unique steam turbine driven chillers, pumps, boiler ID fans and various other devices. The original plant was constructed in 1965 to serve Allegheny Center Mall and was expanded in 1974 to add 4000 tons of cooling and 100,000 lb./hr. of steam capacity. The boilers use combination natural gas/fuel oil burners with no. 2 fuel oil used as back up.
In 2000 an additional 2400 tons of cooling was added as well as a 21,000 MBH hot water boiler to serve PNC Park. In 2004 the plant again underwent renovations including replacement of one steam turbine chiller with an electric driven machine, conversion of the chilled water system to variable-primary-flow, installation of a boiler economizer and installation of refrigerant monitoring system with emergency ventilation system.
The plant is a unique hybrid that can provide either 8,000 tons of cooling using steam turbine driven chillers with steam driven water pumps or use the 4,400 tons of electric driven chillers with electric driven pumps. This allows the plant to provide cooling during power outages and to optimize energy costs by operating either/or the electric chillers or steam driven chillers based on best time of day utility rate. Another unique feature is the entire plant has been re-configured to a variable-primary-flow chilled water distribution. There is no primary–secondary pumping; all system flow is through the chillers. The steam driven chillers are variable speed as well as all chilled water pumps (both electric and steam driven) are variable speed optimizing energy use allowing the cooling equipment to closely follow the system load. These improvements will carry the operation of this plant well past the middle of this century.
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