AN NUYS, Calif. -- Capstone Turbine Corp. continues to expand into the combined heat and power (CHP) market with a project to provide thermal and electrical power at a private high school in Arizona. The order, secured by new distribution partner, Lone Star Power Solutions, is expected to be commissioned in early November 2018.

School officials sought a scalable CHP solution that could be easily expanded in the future to accommodate the growing energy needs of the expanding campus. A four-bay C800S enclosure, with one C200 microturbine installed initially, provides a long-term scalable solution. Every Capstone microturbine is modular and can be expanded to accommodate an increase in site loads. Once additional microturbines are added, this will allow the facility to operate part of the system when powering a partial load or when being serviced. The system will also utilize Capstone’s factory engineered Heat Recovery Module (HRM).

The natural gas-fueled microturbine will be installed in a CHP application in one of Arizona’s rapidly expanding cities. The configuration will operate in parallel with the grid to provide base load power for the over 100,000-square-foot building. With overall system efficiency of up to 80%, the microturbine is expected to lower operating costs while significantly decreasing the high school’s carbon footprint.

"It is great to see our distribution partner’s creativity in capitalizing on the flexibility of our C1000 Signature Series product," said Jim Crouse, Capstone’s Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "We continue to see expanding growth opportunities in the North American CHP market as customers are finding great value in our compact, quiet and reliable microturbines," added Mr. Crouse.

A recent ICF study estimated that during 2008 to 2013, microturbines had approximately a 17% market share and that more recently from 2013 to 2017, the microturbine market share increased to a record 25% of installations larger than 100 kW and smaller than 5 MW in the United States. The majority of the microturbine market share improvement was the result of gains from traditional reciprocating engine competitors that have historically dominated the global CHP market.

Source: Capstone
Associated URL: https://www.capstoneturbine.com/news/press-releases/detail/3629/