With energy costs showing no signs of declining and summer temperatures rising, the Chicago Police Department is turning to distributed generation to save money this summer. Windsor, Colo.-based Encorp and Siemens Building Technologies, Buffalo Grove, Ill., recently completed an installation for the department that will supply 10MW of on-site power in the event that the utility grid should fail.
The $400,000 project, which the city hopes will eliminate downtime, problems with 911 service, and additional costs during peak times, involved the retrofitting of six emergency backup generators, four of which were located at the police station.
Part of the Preparedness Campaign and Energy Plan, the project is the first step toward the city’s goal of providing 1.3 billion kWh of distributed generation to the electrical grid by 2010.
