WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Industrial Technologies Program is offering new assessment and analysis software tools to help industrial companies identify opportunities for reducing costs, saving energy, and improving the performance of industrial energy systems. These include a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Application Tool and a Chilled Water System Analysis Tool (CWSAT).

The Combined Heat and Power Application Tool helps industrial users evaluate the feasibility of CHP for heating systems, such as fuel-fired furnaces, boilers, ovens, heaters, and heat exchangers. The tool can be used to estimate system costs and payback period, and to perform what-if analysis for various utility costs. The tool includes performance data and preliminary cost information for many commercially-available gas turbines, and default values that can be adapted to meet specific application requirements.

The Chilled Water System Analysis Tool helps users determine system energy requirements and evaluate opportunities for energy and costs savings by applying improvement measures. Provide basic information about an existing configuration to calculate current energy consumption, and then select proposed equipment or operational changes for comparison. The results of this analysis helps users quantify the potential benefits of chilled water system improvements.

These new software tools can be downloaded free of charge, along with other available software programs, at the ITP BestPractices Web site. For more information, visit www.oit.doe.gov/bestpractices/software_tools.shtml.

Publication date: 06/13/2005