NRG Emergy at Carnegie Center in West Windsor has signed a 13-year contract to power the coming University Medical Center’s Plainsboro campus, expected to open by the end of 2011.
According to NRG, the utility will provide services from its Combined Heat and Power Plus program that combines conventional and high-efficiency technologies. The hospital will use electricity from a combined heat and power system that includes steam for heat and chilled water for air conditioning from a thermal energy storage system. Solar power generation and energy-saving “smart” meters will be installed for backup power.
The integrated system is expected to cost less than a series of individual installations and generate 125 construction jobs and a dozen long-term employment opportunities, NRG said.
The system, which was not part of the original plan, is subject to approval by the Plainsboro Planning Board. The price of the contract was not released.
The news comes a month after hospital officials announced a $7 million incentive package from PSE&G — including a $5.5 million grant and a $1.5 million loan — to help support some of the approximately $60 million in green initiatives planned at the hospital.
Included in those initiatives are a cogeneration plant — a 4.6 megawatt natural gas-fired cogeneration plan — solar shading, solar power, and thermal energy storage. The exterior of the patient tower will be clad with a large system of sun-shielding exterior louvers to allow the building to have expansive windows to provide 90 percent of interior spaces with natural light.
Located on 50 acres of a 160-acre site in Plainsboro off Route 1, the new University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro (UMCPP) will replace the current UMCP hospital on Witherspoon Street in Princeton. When the new facility opens in late 2011, it will consist of 636,000 square feet of interior space, including 237 single patient rooms, operating rooms, treatment areas, and an emergency department, which will be double the size of the current one.
The new medical center will be located on a campus that will also include a medical office building, a fitness and wellness center, a health education center, a senior residential community, a skilled nursing facility, pediatric services, and a 32-acre public park along the Millstone River.
