Solutions & Technology

Technology Advantage

Perfect Power

Endurant is working with the Galvin Electricity Initiative on Perfect Power, an innovative concept in power grid design aiming to bring electrical networks into the 21st century.

Photo credit: Galvin Electricity Initiative

Endurant Solutions is working with the Galvin Electricity Initiative to pioneer an innovative concept in power distribution network design that has the potential to redefine electrical networks around the nation and throughout the world. The existing electricity system was designed more than 50 years ago and has not changed substantially since its inception. The Perfect Power concept aims to modernize the grid by moving vulnerable above-ground transmission and distribution lines to secure underground conduits, replacing today's largely manual switching with automated digital technologies ("smart" switches & controls), and integrating distributed generation into local networks to enable redundant power supply. The goal is a more efficient, more secure and more cost effective power infrastructure that protects consumers from the economic perils of outages and relieves the planet from undue pollution and emissions.

The Perfect Power prototype at the Illinois Institute of Technology has been awarded a $7 million grant from the US Department of Energy. For details, please visit the Galvin Electricity Initiative's Perfect Power page.

District Energy

District Energy is on-site generation scaled up from building-wide to community-wide production and distribution. DE systems produce steam, hot water or chilled water at a local central plant and pipe the thermal energy to buildings in the district for space heating, domestic hot water and air conditioning. In many cases, waste heat is recovered to generate electricity, essentially creating neighborhood-scale Co-Generation. District Energy eliminates the need for individual building boilers or furnaces and chillers or air conditioners. The advantages are numerous and can be very profitable:

Fuel flexibility: DE systems can exploit the most competitive fuel at the time (coal, oil, natural gas) or easily transition whole communities to biomass, geothermal or other renewable fuel supplies
Pollution mitigation: individual buildings can eliminate CFCs, cooling towers and water treatment chemicals, as well as the "refrigerant compliance" paperwork, regulations and bureaucracy of conventional systems
Reduced building capital costs and space requirements: money and space normally dedicated to boilers and chillers are freed for other valuable purposes
Reliability: round-the-clock professional operators and backup systems typically mean "five nines" (99.999%) uptime

Endurant Solutions has joined the International District Energy Association, the City University of New York (CUNY) Center for Sustainable Energy, the Northeast Combined Heat & Power Initiative and the Association of Energy Engineers of New York in a District Energy outreach campaign, conducting a series of workshops in the northeast US to address the feasibility and potential benefits of establishing District Energy systems, particularly in campus settings such as universities, medical centers and large corporate complexes. Check back soon for notice of the next workshop.