C2K Aquatic Centre in Castle Hill is one of the Sydney’s largest multi-purpose aquatic and leisure centres. The aquatic centre has four indoor pools including a 25-metre pool, an aerobics pool, a program pool, and spa pool.

The centre is open all year and offers facilities for everyone, ranging from toddlers to fifty plus groups, participating in activities covering swimming to fitness classes to gymnasium activities and fitness training.

The need was identified to improve the energy efficiency of the club’s aquatic centre in order to reduce current and projected energy costs and reduce the Club’s carbon footprint. As a result of extensive research, a Cogeneration system was decided on. This would provide the C2K Aquatic Centre with enough power to cover base load electricity demands while utilising waste heat to provide hot water for all of the centre’s swimming pools, and domestic hot water storage tanks was designed and installed by Simons Green Energy.

All of these pools were previously heated by costly electric heat pumps, while domestic hot water was supplied by gas fired hot water units.

What is Cogeneration?

Cogeneration, also known as Combined Heat and Power (CHP), is the simultaneous production of two forms of energy — electricity and heat from a single fuel source, at the point of usage. Cogeneration uses a natural gas-powered engine to generate the on-site electricity and the waste heat from the engine is captured to provide heating for uses such as potable hot water, space heating and process heat for swimming pools and similar applications.

System Details at C2K Aquatic Centre

Designed and installed by Simons Green Energy, the cogeneration Plant is made up of a SEVA 142 kilowatt (kWe) reciprocating gas engine, a series of heat exchangers and hot water storage tanks. The six cylinder MAN engine will produce 775,320kWh of electricity per year which will help reduce energy costs dramatically. The Typical payback period on cogeneration technology varies between four to eight years depending on the application and site specifics.

The engineering team from Simons Green Energy worked closely with the Club’s staff to ensure a smooth installation without interruption to the operation of Centre. The team also worked closely with Endeavour Energy to satisfy their strict design and installation regulations for connecting on-site power generation to the main power grid.

As a result of Simons Green Energy’s highly efficient heat and electricity generation, the new cogeneration plant satisfies 70% of the building’s electricity requirements and is cheaper and cleaner than coal-fired grid supplied electricity. The hot water is produced for “free” from the waste heat of the cogeneration plant. The cogeneration unit at Castle Hill RSL is technologically advanced and highly efficient at about 85% conversion efficiency compared with 30% efficiency for conventional grid supplied electricity.

Environmental Benefits

The cogeneration system will reduce the centre’s CO2 emissions by approximately 600 tonnes per year. This equals the environmental benefit of saving 3,000 trees per year, or taking approximately 135 cars off the road per year. In addition, it is cost-effective and with escalating electricity prices and the likely introduction of a carbon price, the future savings for the Club will be substantial.

Above it all, cogeneration delivers great value energy. By recovering most of this otherwise wasted heat, the system can bring overall energy savings of up to 40%. For an energy intensive venue such as C2K, that can represent a substantial saving, especially when combined with other energy efficiency measures they have undertaken. What’s more, cogeneration has been widely recognised as a key measure in helping to reduce harmful emissions of CO2, with some schemes being shown to halve emissions compared with conventional sources of heat and power.

So, is your centre a candidate for cogeneration?

The first step in deciding whether a cogeneration system is right for your centre is to perform a brief analysis of your energy use. This analysis can be reduced to a few simple questions:

Have you taken all reasonable steps to reduce both electric and heat energy consumption at your Club? Obviously, if you can make improvements in the way you use energy in your club, these will translate into lower operating costs and perhaps reduce the size of the cogeneration system needed and your investment.

Is the average electric load at your Club greater than 100kW? While cogeneration systems incorporating smaller generators are available, clubs with larger energy needs can generate proportionately larger savings and a shorter payback period. To make sure your cogeneration system is running at full capacity most of the time, only plan on generating a portion of your total electric and thermal needs. You’ll still need a utility connection to supply some portion of your load and an on-site boiler to handle peaks in your thermal demand.

If you answered ‘yes’ to the questions, then you may be a good candidate for a more comprehensive analysis. Simons will come out and do a feasibility study on your behalf to understand the centres requirements. They will design, size, develop, deliver, maintain and finance sustainable energy solutions and technologies Australia wide.

Simons Green Energy offer a complete range of sustainable energy equipment, from cogeneration, energy from waste heat , biogas to solar technologies.

For further information:
Simons Green Energy – 755 Botany Road Rosebery NSW 2018
02 8338 8660, toni@simonsgreenenergy.com.au,
www.simonsgreenenergy.com.au