Middlebury receives 2005 Energy Star CHP Award

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy have awarded Middlebury College the 2005 Energy Star CHP Award, which recognizes commercial combined heat and power (CHP) operations that reduce emissions and use at least five percent less fuel than state-of-the-art separate heat and power generation systems.

On Oct. 26, Michael Moser, assistant director of facilities services at Middlebury, and Sean Casten, president and chief executive officer of Massachusetts-based Turbosteam Corporation and a 1993 Middlebury graduate, will accept the award on Middlebury’s behalf at the EPA’s sixth annual CHP Roadmap Meeting in New York City.

“Middlebury is committed to being an environmentally proactive campus both in its academics and its operations. Our CHP system is a great example of that,” said Moser.

Since 1980, Middlebury College has owned and operated the central CHP plant that generates electric power for its campus community at an incremental fuel-to-electric efficiency of 150 percent, using heat that the college would have wasted otherwise. Developed in part by Turbosteam Corporation, the 1.8-megawatt system consists of four fuel-oil-fired boilers and three steam turbine generators. The steam turbine generators satisfy up to 20 percent of the college’s electricity demand. The remaining low pressure steam helps produce hot water for the college’s 2,350 undergraduate students, provides heat to more than 1.6 million square feet of building space, and provides air conditioning in select areas. Operating at more than 81 percent efficiency, the CHP system requires an estimated 6 percent less fuel than typical purchased electricity and onsite thermal generation.

According to Katrina Pielli, program manager of the EPA Combined Heat and Power Partnership, Middlebury is exemplary in its energy efficiency. “Through the use of turbine generators and the recovery of otherwise wasted energy,” she said, “Middlebury College has demonstrated exceptional leadership in both energy use and management.”