Northern Power Systems, a subsidiary of Distributed Energy Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: DESC), has been awarded a master implementation contract by the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to design, engineer and install distributed generation (DG) projects at various NYPA customer sites over the next three years. The anticipated total value of the contract over the three-year time period is between $5 and $10 million.
The first two projects identified for development as part of the master implementation contract are a 400 kW fuel cell CHP system for Metro North in Grand Central Station in New York City and a 240 kW CHP system for SUNY Albany Nanotech at their new global R&D and technology commercialization center.
The master implementation contract follows the launch of NYPA’s 2004 distributed generation (DG) program geared to serve the needs of New York State counties, municipalities, and other entities. The DG program promotes the utilization of a range of technologies — fuel cells, reciprocating engines, gas turbines, photovoltaics — as well as various types of fuels including natural gas and anaerobic digester gas. Operating in both grid-parallel and grid-isolated configurations, the systems for individual DG projects will range in size up to 5 MW of capacity.
According to Northern’s COO, Darren Jamison, the company has identified New York as key to continued growth of the company’s CHP business, and working on a long-term basis with NYPA, NYSERDA, and other state agencies is a key part of that strategy. “We have just opened a New York-Metro Regional Office in Hoboken, New Jersey,” Jamison noted. “Staffed with sales, project engineering and management personnel, this new full service office enables us to actively and aggressively pursue DG projects in New York City, Westchester County, and the greater New York-New Jersey metropolitan area.”
Beyond the NYPA projects, Northern has recently been awarded a $4 million contract to design and build the first large synchronous interconnect DG project in Manhattan for Equity Office, the nation’s largest publicly held office building owner and manager. This project follows on the success of two other grid-interconnected on-site systems for Equity Office’s One Market Street and 201 Mission Street properties in California.
The company was recently awarded a $1 million grant for the first ever synchronous interconnect to Con Edison’s network grid using an inverter- based architecture. “We have worked through difficult interconnection problems in both radial and networked grids and thereby gained the trust and respect of utility engineers across the country,” noted Chach Curtis, Vice President of Northern’s On-Site Generation Group. “We also have the distinction of having designed the largest commercial on-site power system to be fully interconnected with Pacific Gas & Electric’s downtown San Francisco’s networked grid.”
To stay at the forefront of technical developments in the energy market, Northern draws on a 25-person in-house R&D team with its Power Technology Group (PTG), which has been awarded over $2.5 million in Federal and State level grants over the past year to pioneer inverter based interconnection architectures, advanced energy storage systems and MicroGrid Power Networks. The group regularly tests advanced OEM equipment such as microturbines and hydrogen-based fuel cells/electrolyzers, which yields valuable expertise in assessing DG projects in the field.
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