Cogeneration Station
There is a cogeneration station at the round building of Tarongers campus. What is?
Cogeneration is a process by which electricity and heat is obtained. Specifically, there are two natural gas engines that generate electricity for consumption on the campus on the Tarongers campus. The advantage of generating electricity at the same point where it is consumed, is that it reduces the need for distribution networks, which, besides, they also have losses.
The engines heat up, and it is used to provide heat to various campus buildings by a system of pipelines. This way, the energy efficiency is higher than any power plant.
In addition, by absorbing heat you can get cold water, which in summer also serves to provide cooling for the air conditioning system throughout the campus.
As generating electricity, heat and cold, is said to be a trigeneration station.
Although it works by burning natural gas, as the energy use is higher, the European Union promotes the generation of electricity from cogeneration. In fact, this station was built with a grant from the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE).
You can see the electricity and heat production of the cogeneration station in this page: Cogeneration
Photovoltaic Panels
The University of Valencia decided to install photovoltaic solar panels on their roofs.
The panels are installed and working since October 2008. All together provide a total of 1.285 kWp power, so the University of Valencia is the largest producer of renewable energy in the city.
Along with the CHP station, the University generates 20% of the electricity it consumes, thus improving the quality of their sources of supply, reduce the economic cost, the dependence of the distribution network and the emissions of greenhouse emissions.
You can see the electricity production of the photovoltaic panels in this page: Photovoltaic generation
In the following link you can see a short video of the installation:
Telemetry equipment
For the assessment and control all those improvements, it is necessary to make a detailed monitoring of consumption, and that is not possible with the traditional counters. For this reason the University has in each building some electricity meters connected to the computer network to send continuous consumption and power data, so that from any computer it is available to consult the developments throughout the day and especially to send periodic information to those responsible for the buildings.
All this information is key to assessing compliance with the objectives of the Energy Saving Programme, and serves to plan actions where they are most effective.
Energy Saving Programme
“Energía viva” (living energy) campaign is part of the Energy Conservation Programme of UV, which beyond diffusion, is responsible for carrying out various activities in facilities, in order to reduce consumption.
Periodically, the centres provide status information for each of the measures, and finally the evolution of the electricity consumption and its deviation from the target will be controlled.
