If you’re in operations, I’m sure every year you are asked to reduce your budget. At the same time, your sustainability team is asking you to go green. One of Tecogen’s customers, an operations manager at a large campus had the same problem. He was able to do both and still have budget left over to give his team a raise.

His chiller was 25 years old so his engineer advised him to replace it with a new electric chiller. Before deciding, he looked at his electric bill and saw it had gone up 30% in the last 2 years. Most people don’t realize this but your power usage on the hottest day sets the electricity rate for the rest of the year. When electric chillers go from half load to full load, they use 4x the amount of power. He needed a solution that would free up cash without putting him at the mercy of the electric utility.

1/4 the Fuel Cost, 2x Efficiency Equals 40 to 60% Savings

He came across Tecogen’s natural gas engine driven chiller at a tradeshow. Natural gas is roughly 1/4th the price of electricity and the engine provides free hot water. This means he doesn’t have to run his boiler in summer for dehumidification. The difference in price of fuel and efficiency gains means utility bill savings of 40 to 60%. In this case savings of $100k or more, even after maintenance. 

99.8% Uptime

These chillers are used in hospitals, indoor cultivation and critical process cooling facilities where uptime is essential. With Tecogen’s 24/7 factory service plan sites see uptime of 99.8%. 

The Tecochill was an easy like for like replacement for the existing electric chiller. The Tecochill only uses 2KW for power instead of 300KW for an equivalently sized electric chiller, so his utility bills have dramatically come down. Also, since the electricity grid is still predominantly fossil fuel based, he is reducing his carbon footprint with the Tecochill.