Sacramento Railyards Central Utility Plant

Client: Sacramento Municipal Utility District

SMUD approached IEC to conduct an in-depth engineering analysis and develop a complete report to estimate the scope and cost of installing a central energy supply plant and distribution system to serve the Sacramento Railyards development. This included recommending the major equipment that would best serve the heating and cooling needs of the development, defining the space requirements for the plant, and determining the capital costs for cogeneration equipment and the O&M costs.
 
The overall focus of this project was to evaluate and develop a business plan for SMUD ownership of a Heating and Cooling plant for the new Sacramento Railyards development. The Railyards redevelopment will transform a 240-acre greenfield site (formerly the site of the Union Pacific Railyards) into a commercial and residential development.

IEC evaluated various Central Utility Plant configurations; to select the best configuration, the analysis evaluated various parameters, including: equipment types, plant efficiency, NOx emissions, greenhouse gas emissions, capital cost, operation and maintenance cost, electrical peak demand and usage requirements, natural gas fuel consumption, and space requirements. The best configuration was then compared to the standard heating and cooling equipment traditionally installed at each building and structure to determine the benefits of installing a Central Utility Plant. To evaluate equipment selection and plant performance, IEC conducted a variety of analyses, including:

• Distribution Piping Analysis
• Central Plant Heating and Cooling Equipment Analysis
• Cogeneration Plant Equipment Selection and Analysis
• Thermal Energy Storage Analysis
• Single vs. Multiple Plant Installations
• Land and Building Space Requirements
• Building Interface and Mechanical Room Requirements
• Peak Demand/Annual Energy Usage

SMUD found the report to be very thorough and well prepared, and, as a result, assigned additional work to IEC to perform an analysis of three additional options for the system.