ABSTRACT

DRIVING EFFICIENCY & SUSTAINABILITY WITH O&M FOR ENERGY ONSITE SOLUTIONS: A BEST PRACTICE

For many businesses, choosing to install a cogeneration or trigeneration unit is a crucial step, aiming to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions in their operations. This investment can have a significant impact on a company's performance and growth, but can have also an impact on its budget, especially when it chooses to invest directly its capital, instead of relying on a financed solution. For this reason, choosing the right Operation and Maintenance program is essential to ensure that the CHP retains its original efficiency throughout its life cycle, which is generally around ten years. And at the end of a cogeneration unit life cycle, what can a company do?

Businesses are faced with a choice: replace the plant with a new CHP unit or undertake a revamping to renew the existing one. Revamping the unit offers quick results and optimizes the initial investment: it entails carrying out a 'health check’ to determine which areas need intervention and implementing the necessary maintenance activities to restore and guarantee optimal unit performance and efficiency.  The engine and the alternator are at the heart of the revamping and they can be overhauled or even replaced, if needed. Further to this, and based on the outcome of the initial 'health check’, aimed interventions will be carried out on the balance of plant components. These include, but are not limited to, boilers, steam boilers, absorption chillers, evaporation towers and selective catalytic reduction systems.  

Centrica Business Solutions uniquely and interestingly offers this service via the means of direct financing. With the financed solution, the customer pays for the energy produced by the revamped cogenerator at a fixed monthly rate, lower than the cost of grid energy, and receives the generated heat (and cooling energy, in the case of trigeneration) free of charge. This model allows the company to be energy efficient and to benefit from the economical savings associated with CHP technologies for a further period of approximately 10 years, without the additional worries about the maintenance of the cogenerator, as a Full Service O&M package is included for the duration of the 'new’ life cycle.

During the speech, Daniele Francone and Marco Rizzo will elaborate on the strategies and operational methods of an effective O&M solution, with a main focus on revamping of CHP units for companies. Moreover, our experts will share a best practice of a client company that has chosen to revamp its cogenerator with a financed contract, thus continuing its energy efficiency journey without further investment.

BIO

Daniele Francone is Head of Sales at Centrica Business Solutions Italia. In Centrica since 2015, he is in charge of defining business strategies and developing new solutions, identifying new opportunities and expanding business relationships. As a certified energy management expert, he has a great ability to analyse the energy situation of companies and design solutions to reduce consumption, decarbonise processes and improve energy efficiency and sustainability. 

Previously, he held the roles of Project Manager, Sales Manager and Consultant in the energy and industrial mechanical engineering sector. He holds a degree in Energy Engineering from Politecnico di Milano.

Marco Rizzo is Account Manager at Centrica Business Solutions and is responsible for the development of commercial activities with new and existing customers in the field of Operation and Maintenance, with a special focus on financed revamping of cogeneration units.