By shifting from a cogen plant, Stanford achieved a 68% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a 67% reduction in water use (saving 127 million gallons in the first year). 90% of the campus’ heating needs are met by waste heat recovery. The facility cost $300M, about $30-40M more than a comparable cogen facility, and it is expected to save an incremental $300M in energy costs over its lifetime.

These three heat recovery chillers (HRC) are huge, custom-built so each of them has a 2,500 tons cooling capacity and produces 40M BTUs of heat/hr for the hot water loops. In aggregate, the system you see here could heat and cool 30,000 average homes. HRCs have never been done at this scale before (600T is the prior record).

By shifting from a cogen plant, Stanford achieved a 68% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a 67% reduction in water use (saving 127 million gallons in the first year). 90% of the campus’ heating needs are met by waste heat recovery. The facility cost $300M, about $30-40M more than a comparable cogen facility, and it is expected to save an incremental $300M in energy costs over its lifetime.

These three heat recovery chillers (HRC) are huge, custom-built so each of them has a 2,500 tons cooling capacity and produces 40M BTUs of heat/hr for the hot water loops. In aggregate, the system you see here could heat and cool 30,000 average homes. HRCs have never been done at this scale before (600T is the prior record).