INDUSTRY PROFESSIONAL
Controlling the Cogeneration Plant for Hudson Yards
- By Randy Smith
- Sep 04, 2020
Towering over the Hudson
River on Manhattan’s New
West Side is Hudson Yards –
a cultural epicenter with more
than 100 diverse shops, residences and
culinary experiences. By area, it’s the largest
private real estate development in the
United States – covering more than 18
million square feet over seven city blocks.
Early in the planning process, the
Hudson Yards development recognized
the opportunity to power Hudson Yards
in a resilient, effective and sustainable way.
The answer was a 13.3-MW cogeneration
(CoGen) plant.
“The plant is a green initiative, we
wanted to limit the greenhouse gasses
by burning natural gas onsite, said Nick
Lanzillotto, vice president of MEPHRY
Development. “It means we use
about 80 percent of the energy the plant
produces both electrical and thermal
energies, as opposed to around 30 percent
of the energy from commercial electric
suppliers.”
NOT YOUR TYPICAL POWER PLANT
The CoGen plant at Hudson Yards
serves all the buildings in the Eastern
Railyards development. The buildings
energy needs are met with Cogen as well
as the buildings own infrastructure. It’s
a complex system that requires a master
control room to keep everything operating
smoothly.
“We needed to set up a control center
that’s more typical of a power plant and a
district energy plant rather than a typical
New York City skyscraper,” Lanzillotto said.
Nick had a vision for this control center.
Well into the center’s development, he
realized his vision wasn’t being achieved.
That’s when he discovered Winsted.
“I happened to visit Winsted website
and saw images of control room layouts,
they just had the right feel,” Lanzillotto
said. “That’s when we brought Winsted
into the project.”
A SEAMLESS PROCESS – FROM
CONCEPT TO INSTALLATION
From concept to installation, the setup
was smooth and seamless. So much so,
that Lanzillotto wished other Hudson
Yards projects would follow suit.
“If the whole project went as easy
our work with Winsted, it would’ve been
great,” Lanzillotto said. “The Winsted
team was wonderful to work with. From
rendering to layout, to determining
the right components, all the way to
installation, it all went very smooth.
In total, the CoGen plant’s control
room contains five workstations, each
with four monitors. An 8’ x 16’ video
board stands in front of the workstations.
Outside of the control room sits the information
room with a single technician
workstation, filing cabinets, storage cabinets
and a blueprint-reading table with additional
storage.
“They made it very easy for us,” said
Nick. “Because it was so seamless, we
worked with Winstead on a fire command
center that also went very well.”
This article originally appeared in the September 2020 issue of Security Today.
About the Author
Randy Smith is the president of The Winsted Corp.