Power to the 12 North Shore Towers Courier n September 2014 $14M remake of NST generators complete People Let there be light! And while you’re at it, heat and air conditioning too. The massive, $14-million renovation of North Shore Towers’ power plant is done. Three new generators have been installed, replacing equipment that has been here since Ralph Houk was manager of the Yankees and gas was $2 a gallon. It was perhaps the most extensive capital project undertaken here since Building 3 – the last of the towers – was completed 40 years ago. Sal Castro, the Towers chief engineer, remembers the first, tentative rumblings about rebuilding the power plant surfaced more than five years ago. He should know. Sal has worked at the Towers power plant most of his professional life -- beginning as a fresh-out-of-school engineer 37 years ago working the night shift. “The problem was parts,” Sal says simply. For years now, It could take 10 to 14 weeks to get replacement parts, Sal said – if they could be found at all. The company that made the original generators, Chicago Pneumatic, effectively went out of the residential power-plant business in the 1980s. So years ago, Castro began squirrelling away extra parts – or arranging to have them made from scratch at area machine shops – to keep the old engines running. Then, after years of ever-tighter emissions regulations, the final straw came from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which licenses power plants. Some how or another, the Towers would have to upgrade its plant for lower emissions or risk non-renewal of its next five-year, operating permit, the state said. The Towers board could see where things were headed. And so, two years ago, the rebuilding process began. Two stories below the Arcade, the plant that powers the Towers makes so much noise that normal conversation is nearly impossible. Communicating is by hand gestures and short yells. But the sight of three gleaming, canary-yellow generators is unmistakable. The new engines – made by Caterpillar, the tractor people, in Indiana -- stand out next to Sal Castro, chief engineer of NST, in the control room of the new power plant. three, near-black hulks that look like of locomotives from an old Western movie. The tricky part of rebuilding the power plant was not in replacing three 50-ton generators, it turns out. But in the second part of the electricity making process – capturing all the extra heat and energy that used to go up the smoke stack of power plants big and small. Sketching on a pad, Sal explains that the process of creating electricity is only 34 percent efficient – meaning that for every unit of propane gas that goes to fuel the generators, only 34 percent ends up as electricity. “Ït’s the nature of things,” he says. “It’s the BTU content of each kilowatt of electricity you can get from the horsepower of the engine. That part of the technology has never changed.” But by doing things like recirculating the superheated water that cools the generators and capturing the hot exhaust that goes up the chimney, the power plant can generate steam for the radiators and hot water for showers and washing machines – not to mention the power to run the air conditioners in summer – at no extra cost. This second process – called co-generation by the engineers – recaptures another 34 percent, he says. ““We were among the first to do it when this plant was built,” Sal says. “But since engines are built differently today to keep the emissions lower, it is actually a little harder to do and so a lot of extra heat exchangers and pumps had to be added to our mechanical room besides the equipment replaced in our engine room. Along with the computerized controls that we never had, the system has been completely revamped and modernized.” Starting last December, three old generators that were ripped out. Only a small portion of the old engines were scrapped. Most of the Mayor Lindsay-era
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