Bradley Bathgate, PE
President and Practicing Principal at PWI Engineering

With all of the talk of Combined Heat and Power, CHP, Cogeneration, Cogen, and Distributed Generation there are a lot of medical facilities and academic institutions that want to reduce the costs of producing energy, reduce their carbon footprint, and make a resilient infrastructure. Feasibility studies are the start of this process, and in our company’s opinion one of the most important parts. Don’t ever fall for the free feasibility study. This study will be the road map to the future. I always make the analogy that if you are having a medical problem, you go to the doctor that is going to give you the best advice that is proven with experience, not the one on the corner giving out the free advice. Find the firm that has the most experience and will give you a study that you will feel comfortable sitting in front of your boss and asking for millions of dollars, and possibly putting your job on the line. Read more “Mercury Rising – Part 1”

Bradley Bathgate, PE
President and Practicing Principal at PWI Engineering
I was recently asked about the reliability of CHP at a hospital and what the thoughts were about having redundant units, known as N+1, or a standby CHP System. Although resilient and reliable at first thought, the ramifications of N+1 for constant power/thermal generation can be costly in the beginning and throughout the life of the plant. With CHP you are now integrating yourself more into other parts of the energy and infrastructure industries than before with the traditional systems. Let’s break things down to better grasp understanding.

Read more “The Additional Considerations for N+1 with CHP at a Hospital.”

Engineering to an outside observer may just seem like one giant profession of people who like math. The reality of the matter is though that within engineering there’s a massive breadth of disciplines that are about as different as astronomers and astrologists.
Read more “Explore 15 Engineering Degrees out There: What’s the Best Fit for You?”