By early 2019, most of our clients started asking us what we could do to lower their carbon footprint in their existing properties. Many of these clients are Fortune 500 companies with strong environmental mandates, and they wanted to go beyond the usual steps of upgrading to LED lighting, installing variable air volume systems, or purchasing Energy Star appliances/computers. In other words, they’d already grasped the low-hanging fruit. It was time for Syska Innovations, which has a focus on eco-innovation (one of seven focus “buckets”), to help them aim higher.
We began to scour the marketplace for companies while synthesizing ideas in-house. During this process, I was introduced to Dan and Mike at Enviropower (www.enviropowertec.com). I immediately realized that this firm would be an excellent fit for Syska Innovations’ investment program.
Why? Enviropower makes a boiler called the SmartWatt boiler that produces electricity as a by-product and is geared towards the replacement market. Mike explained to me how his system generates steam in an enclosed volume, which spins an electricity-generating turbine. Along with a dual-circuited heat exchanger, hot water is produced, alongside the steam, and pumped through the building for heating needs. I thought this was brilliant, and that this solution was something we could offer to our clients.
What also appealed to me was the potential to expand on the installation of the boiler by adding a small drycooler. This would enable the device to serve as a backup power source or to replace generators. Also intriguing are the efforts of the product engineers to develop a way for the boiler to fire off hydrogen. We believe a hydrogen infrastructure derived from blue hydrogen can be a real alternative to electrification for heating.
We were convinced that this solution would be part of our eco-innovation arsenal going forward. Our AEC Angels group was equally impressed. I’ll talk more about AEC Angels in future blogs, but for now you can check out the group’s website at https://aec-angels.com/.
Now the fun part as an MEP engineer is to design an application around a product. As with any new technology, having a successful pilot project will go a long way to validate the product. Our first project with Enviro Power involved a multi-family residential building. We decided it would be best to incorporate the Smartwatt boiler into the building’s domestic water system. The boiler was connected into the system via a double-wall brazed-plate heat exchanger.
We sized the water storage tanks so that we could optimize the runtime of the Smartwatt boiler in order to maximize the electricity generated. Would you like to hear how much energy we saved? Stay tuned for more articles. But … so far, so good.
