White Harvest Energy and Erlanger joined forces to apply for and win a $6.75 million grant which will help pay for a new Combined Heat and Power (CHP) facility at Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga.

Overall the new facility will cost $13 million and will bring major energy cost savings, cleaner air and more reliable power.

John Loetscher, vice president for Erlanger facilities, engineering and real estate, said the project should have a payback of just under four years on Erlanger’s $6.25 million investment.

White Harvest Energy is a Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council member. The company has a location in Chattanooga and helps utilities, electric power distributors, cooperatives and other companies adapt to a changing market by incorporating the best technologies available in the marketplace. White Harvest Energy is currently introducing businesses to the best modular Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants on the market and that includes Erlanger Health System in its own backyard.

Doug Edgar, the Vice President of Operations at White Harvest Energy, is particularly excited about how this project could open more opportunities throughout the region.

“This project highlights the great potential we have in our community and throughout the state of Tennessee to implement common sense clean energy projects,” said Edgar.

The project includes three modular natural gas combined heat and power units sized at two MW each totaling to six MW. These units will generate electricity for the hospital to use. The heat also generated from the units as a by-product will be captured and used to displace natural gas consumed by the steam boilers in the existing central energy plant. Right now all the campus’ heat is generated by the four boilers in the central energy plant. In the new system, there will be one single fuel source.

The new plant will be next to the central energy plant at the rear of the hospital. The design and construction of the new power plant will take approximately two years.

The Erlanger Health System is a multi-hospital system with five hospitals based in Chattanooga: the Baroness Hospital, Children’s Hospital at Erlanger, Erlanger North Hospital, Erlanger East Hospital, and Erlanger Bledsoe Hospital, located in Pikeville, TN. Erlanger is the 7th largest public hospital in the United States and has been recognized as “Chattanooga’s number one hospital” by U.S. News and World Report.

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