New York City Housing Authority – Sreeram Bhargav Dhurjati – 2016

Goals:

NYCHA is the largest public housing authority in North America. As part of the 10-year sustainability commitments outlined in the NextGeneration NYCHA Sustainability Agenda, NYCHA aims to address climate adaptation and resiliency in all of its capital planning, eliminate unplanned heat and hot water outages, and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2025. Installing a CHP system is one of the most efficient ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring a stable power supply and the heat and hot water needs of a facility. NYCHA enlisted EDF Climate Corps fellow Sreeram Bhargav Dhurjati to develop a CHP Project Feasibility Analysis Toolkit. Sreeram was tasked with creating a shareable and user-friendly toolkit that would enable NYCHA to carry out a preliminary technical and financial feasibility analysis of installing a CHP project.

Solutions:

Sreeram brainstormed with different NYCHA departments to identify their facilities’ unique energy requirements. He researched CHP technology and interviewed project developers to better understand best practices. After compiling his findings, he created a list of the key factors that needed to be modelled in order to carry out a preliminary feasibility analysis of a CHP project.

Sreeram encountered his biggest challenge when developing a model to perform a sensitivity analysis of different utility rate structures on the CHP project life-cycle costs. He coordinated with Con Edison and the New York Power Authority to analyze the impact of a CHP project on its energy bill.

Potential Impact:

By the end of his summer engagement, Sreeram created a toolkit that enabled NYCHA to:

1. Carry out electrical and thermal load profiling at a candidate facility;

2. Determine CHP unit size and analyze its different operating modes;

3. Identify permitting impacts and utility interconnection requirements;

4. Estimate installation and operating and maintenance costs;

5. Carry out sensitivity analysis of a new utility rate structure; and

6. Calculate financial indicators of the project (simple payback, ROI, etc.).

The next step is expanding the toolkit to include models of additional incentives such as a Demand Response Program, Net Metering and Environmental Revenue Streams, and to quantify resiliency benefits. Moving forward, NYCHA can conduct a detailed feasibility analysis of a CHP project, which will help the agency reduce risks in its decision-making.