[Editor’s note: the call for submissions for the 2021 Environment + Energy Leader Awards will be announced this month. Stay tuned for more information. Lockheed Martin was a recipient of a 2020 Top Project of the Year Award.]
Aerospace, defense, arms, security, and advanced technologies company Lockheed Martin’s location in Moorestown, New Jersey, had heat distributed from a centralized steam plant to numerous buildings for 65 years. The steam developed at this centralized location was then piped throughout the nearly 1.16 million-square-foot site to serve building heating systems, air handler coils, and steam unit heaters. This steam also provided heating for a 280,000-gallon water tank. In a multi-phased project implemented over six years and completed in 2019, Lockheed Martin replaced the centralized steam plant with a distributed system of high- efficiency condensing boiler plants in several buildings to optimize efficiency and reduce the energy required to heat this site.
The Moorestown steam decentralization project was identified during the site’s energy structured improvement activity event, where experts from across the corporation worked directly with the site’s facilities team to identify the most promising energy-saving opportunities. A funding and execution plan was then developed, and the project began in 2013 with the first phase, which allowed for the central steam system to be deactivated in the summer months, Lockheed Martin said. This approach helped the project to get off the ground with available funds while allowing the site team to gain confidence in the project’s overall premise.
During the next six years, the centralized steam plant was replaced with a distributed system of high-efficiency condensing boiler plants in several buildings to optimize efficiency and reduce the energy required to heat the site. The project involved close coordination between the site facilities project team, design engineers, contractors, and site programs to make sure that the site’s missions, and those of government customers, were not affected.
The project’s gradual implementation enabled a drastic change to a key site service to be embraced and supported by even the most ardent skeptics, Lockheed Martin said. Successfully turning off the central steam in the summer showed the facilities and site teams that removing central steam from the site could be achieved.
Decentralizing the boiler operations and updating the equipment and controls means that the boilers no longer operate on a 24/7 basis. Now energy for heating is used only when required. Piping repair and replacement costs from the centralized steam plant have been mitigated as well. This large-scale update, which cost $2.5 million, resulted in an annual cost avoidance of $518,000 and an annual energy avoidance of 17,580 MMBTU, reducing the site’s consumption of natural gas by 24%, Lockheed Martin said.
