He was an operations manager at a large hospital dealing with a 25 year old chiller that was limping along. When it got sweltering hot outside, the chiller would break down. He needed to replace it, but budgets were very tight. How was he going to pay to replace it.
His engineering consultant wanted him to replace it with an electric chiller. At the same time, he needed to think about the next 25 years. He looked at his latest electricity bill and saw it had soared 30% in the last 2 years. Those electricity bills weren’t coming down. Each year utility bills would eat more of his annual budget. Nothing would be left over for all the other things that needed fixing.
The operations manager came across Tecogen at a tradeshow. Powered by a V8 engine, Tecogen’s chiller runs on natural gas which is 1/4th the price of electricity. It also makes free hot water. This means he can turn his boiler off in summer. Cheap natural gas and free hot water means he is saving $164,500 annually in energy bills even after maintenance. He even managed to halve his chiller greenhouse gas emissions at the same time. Getting his bosses to approve a chiller project that paid for itself in under 3 years was also easy.
Of course, a chiller needs to be dependable. These chillers are used in hospitals, indoor agriculture, and industrial cooling where reliability is essential. Tecogen has sold more than 1,100 chillers with runtime of over 20 million hours. With Tecogen’s 24/7 factory service plan, chiller sites can see uptime of 99.8%.
The federal government also recognizes that technologies like this are essential to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why there is a 40% investment tax credit for Tecogen’s products.