The funds had been committed to build a new facility, then at the last minute the electric utility said, “we’ll have enough power for your facility in 12 to 18 months if you pay us”.  What do you do then? This was the dilemma faced by a cannabis company based in Massachusetts. Waiting a year wasn’t an option. Customers were waiting, investors were ready with their check book and finding a new location in time wasn’t going to happen. They needed to find a creative solution to open on schedule.

Fortunately, one of their biggest electrical loads was cooling. Growing indoors requires 24/7 cooling to keep the plants at optimum temperature and the humidity controlled to avoid mold. If they could reduce the amount of electricity needed for cooling, they would be able to open on time. If they needed additional power, they could always add some on-site electrical generation.

When capital budgets are tight, electrical upgrades are often what push a project over the edge. By avoiding them with Tecogen, they reduced upfront costs, cut operating expenses through efficient natural gas use, and solve power constraints at the same time. That’s when they had a winning solution.

This is where Tecochill engine driven chillers came in. The Tecogen chillers can generate on-site cooling using a natural gas engine. The waste heat is recovered from the engine so both chilled water and hot water are produced simultaneously. The air temperature is lowered using chilled water to remove the humidity and then reheated to the operating temperature using the waste heat. The Tecochill only takes 2KW of power to operate compared to 300KW for an equivalent electric chiller.

Twice the efficiency, half the cost

The efficiency advantages meant that the operating costs for the Tecochill plant was half that of an electric chiller. The power shortage issue was solved and as a bonus, the high efficiencies of the Tecogen chiller meant the greenhouses gases were reduced by 40 to 60%.

More and more businesses looking to expand can’t get enough power from the utility during peak times. If you’re spending more than $100,000 on energy a year, have unreliable power or lack of power when and where you need it, it could cripple your business. Reducing these expenses substantially gives Tecogen's products an incredibly short payback.

Tecogen has shipped more than 3,200 units and our equipment has collectively run more than 10 million hours. Contact us now on sales@tecogen.com or fill out the form below so you can find out how much you can save.