ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Illinois (Oct. 18, 2017) -- The installation has more than 6,000,000 square feet of building spaces of which most were heated through a 100-year-old, 63 percent efficient, coal-fired central heating plant that had reached the end of its economic life. Other issues included: many spare parts were no longer available for coal boiler components, cost renovations to meet new air emission requirements would be extremely expensive, annual operation costs would increase significantly to support the additional personnel for air emission equipment, and a mandated centralized/de-centralized Army study determined that the best path forward was to de-centralize the installation heating system.
Public Works attempted for several years to replace the plant and modernize, but due to the significant cost, appropriated funds could not be obtained during the era of sequestration, continuing Congressional resolutions, and budget constraints. When additional and significantly more stringent air emission requirements were enforced by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Savings Performance Contract was the only method available to avoid a very expensive Notice of Violation.
The ESPC was the most cost effective method to quickly replace the coal fired centralized heating system with a natural gas de-centralize system and meet the EPA air emission reduction deadline. In addition, the ESPC would assisted the installation in reaching the required 30 percent energy reduction goals. To make the situation worse, there were very expensive steam line failures that affected several buildings which needed immediate repair. In the last few days of the fiscal year, Installation Management Command provided $4 million, which was quickly transferred to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for them to convert five buildings to natural gas. This alleviated the steam line repair crisis. The conversion of these five buildings to natural gas became the first phase of a multi-phase, multi-year, and multi-organizational plan to convert the installation from coal to natural gas.
In May 2016, the 100-year-old coal-fired central heating plant was shut down as the final changes occurred to convert our heating system over to natural gas. In October 2016, the multi-year construction and conversion process from centralized steam heating system to decentralized natural gas heating for 35 Garrison buildings was completed. The Garrison construction process was completed using a $22.4 million Energy Savings Performance Contract task order as well as a $4 million construction work performed by the USACE Louisville District. Over a two-year period, the ESPC contractor converted 30 Garrison buildings and the USACE converted five Garrison buildings. The Rock Island Arsenal-Joint Manufacturing Technology Center converted all the manufacturing buildings to natural gas through a separate ESPC task order.
The $4 million design build Garrison contract used appropriated funds and was procured by the USACE Louisville District with Fiscal Year 2013 IMCOM funds to convert five buildings from steam to natural gas that were on the central heating plant system (buildings 112, 144, 145, 154, and 299). For Building 299 this consisted of replacing the steam heating system with infrared heat, electric heat, high efficiency hot water boilers, and direct-fire heating systems. The energy reduction of this portion of the project was separately measured for each building in FY2012 and FY2016. The measurements confirmed an 18,736 million British Thermal Units reduction at the end of FY2016. This was a multi-year effort starting in 2013 and completed in FY2016.
The $22.4 million Garrison ESPC contract task order was through the USACE Huntsville District decentralizing and converting the remaining 30 Garrison buildings to natural gas (56, 60-63, 66-68, 72, 73, 75, 90, 102-104, 106-110, 114, 131, 132, 139, 140, 159, 225, 350, 351, 390). This phase was accomplished over two heating seasons. Twelve buildings were completed by the first heating season and taken off the central steam plant. This decreased load on the central heating plant enabled the Garrison to start seeing energy and costs savings throughout FY16. The remaining 18 buildings were converted by the end of FY16. Anticipating that all the buildings would be converted before the second heating season started in the fall of 2016, the central heating plant was taken off line in May 2016. The energy reduction of this portion of the project has an ESPC contractual guarantee of 99,119 MBTU energy reduction for the Garrison. This effort started in FY2015 and was completed at the end of FY2016. The total savings during FY17 for this phase was 133,201 MBTU which was 134.4 percent of the contractual requirement.
The estimated total future costs savings for the Garrison work over 25 years is estimated to be $51,820,625 and 2,946,375 MBTU.
Water savings due to the Garrison effort was measured to be 12,530,000 gallons and comes very close to the 13,000,000 gallons, which is an ESPC guaranteed contracted savings. This water savings helped the installation exceed the FY17 water reduction goal.
Base Operations and Maintenance contractual changes contributed substantially to the annual monetary savings. This is based upon changes to the base operations contract after removing O&M costs for the steam plant and the steam distribution system and considering the new O&M costs for the new heating systems.
The guaranteed simple pay back for the Garrison ESPC is 12.29 years taking into consideration the energy, operation, and maintenance savings.
Environmentally, the Garrison made huge strides in improving the island's air quality. This included a 90 percent reduction in emissions of Hazardous Air Pollutants and an 87 percent reduction in "criteria" air pollutants. The air improvement has been noticed and applauded by the almost 500,000 local residents. This demonstrates how the U.S. Army is helping to improve local health conditions, especially for the children and elderly population.
With the coal fired steam plant, annual air permitting costs were $35,000 and the Garrison had to hire a contractor for $50,000 per year to fill out, submit and carry out the permitting requirements. The Garrison was also under a federal mandate to meet the Illinois EPA emission reductions. With the closing of the coal fired steam plant, the permitting is done in house and cost approximately $3,500 annually; an $81,500 annual Garrison savings. The Garrison met the Illinois deadline for air emission reduction which facilitated a continued good relationship with the Illinois EPA. The Garrison is also saving more than $7,000 per year with the elimination of ash removal.
A third environmental benefit is that the Garrison will not have to worry about run off from a coal pile and possibly polluting the Mississippi river.
Fuel savings come from eliminating transporting coal from the coal pile to the steam plant, pile packing, and fighting coal fires.
Fire safety was improved by the elimination of coal-pile fires.
The conversion to natural gas also eliminated the annual coal pile weatherization loss. This energy savings is not included in the guaranteed energy savings contract. That contract is based upon coal usage at the steam plant itself. The weatherization loss was estimated to be 4 percent of the coal pile each year which amounted to an average annual loss of 6,864 MBTU. At $165.35 per ton, this is an annual savings of $43,652 ($165.35 x 264 tons per year lost). This amounts to $1,091,300 and 171,600 MBTU savings over a 25-year life.
The final phase of this effort will be the demolition of the central heating plant which is targeted to begin in FY18, but is contingent on final environmental, historical, and funding approvals.
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