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Design
"Design is not how things are – it is how they might be." [sic]
–Herbert Simon, Carnegie Mellon University
According to the dictionary, to design is to skillfully plan for something. As Herbert Simon says, it needs to reflect how things can and should be when completed according to an integrated view of the finished project. As such, the design of any energy facility or its individual sites requires skilled, experienced professionals and – again – is best done as a step within an overall integrated process, not as a stand-alone phase. EcoEnergy has many years of experience in the design of energy facilities that are situated for both maximum energy efficiency and minimum impact on the communities they serve.
The ability to create facilities that are sensitive to all concerns – environmental, social, economic – is dependent on familiarity with a wide variety of disciplines. The consolidation of all of these skills in-house at EcoEnergy gives us a competitive advantage that works to the benefit of our stakeholders, partners and communities too.
Wind facility designs, for example, present unique challenges that bring out the best in us. Wind turbine project design includes civil design, roads and turbine foundations, as well as a great deal of electrical design and design of underground collection systems, substations and electrical protection devices. EcoEnergy has over 30 employees on staff to perform and manage these design activities, including certified professional engineers in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering. These technical members of the team are complimented by staff with backgrounds in public relations/eduction, land use, permitting and wildlife biology.
Biofuel project design involves an initial determination of how to best utilize the biosource, such as wood by-products, landfill gas, or similar. This determination begins with an analysis of the best use of the biosource(s) while determining energy integration options for existing facility processes (displacing fossil fuels such as coal, oil or natural gas) or completely new facilities to generate electricity. EcoEnergy designs integrate the use of raw biosource materials into a useful energy supply through a variety of methods. One of these could be a boiler fuel application, where there are numerous important considerations in the final equipment selection, including the boiler style and overall construction method. These are important in being able to utilize other fuels if the biosource fuel supply is variable. In the case of a boiler utilizing a biosource to produce process steam or steam turbine for electric generation, there are many other design considerations, such as fuel delivery and handling, super-heater systems, steam extraction for facility steam processes or turbine applications as well as emission controls, such as cyclone, bag house, or electrostatic precipitator [ESP] systems.
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