NATO's HQ depends on Perkins standby power

The Perkins® 4016 61TRG3 provides reliable standby power to NATO’s political nerve centre, whilst the 4016 61TRS2 maintains a constant source of cogenerated heat.

Opportunity

The headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium is the permanent home of the senior political decision-making body as well as its administrative centre.

Around 4,000 members of staff occupy the Brussels headquarters hosting over 5,000 meetings every year between representatives from all of the member states, coming together to make decisions which affect the entire world.

Perkins steps up

30 years after its inauguration, the original premises became unsuitable for the current needs of the organisation and a new state of the art facility was designed which enable NATO to lessen its environmental impact.

As part of this initiative, NATO commissioned Perkins customer in Belgium, E. Van Wingen, for the supply of two diesel generator sets to provide emergency standby power to the building’s critical load.

With its class leading load acceptance providing end users with a quick response in reaction to mains power failure, the Perkins 4016 61TRG was the engine of choice when it came to powering these generators.

In addition, NATO also commissioned E. Van Wingen to build a state of the art cogeneration system with three Perkins 4016 61 TRS2 engines at its core in order to provide a constant source of heat to the facility.

Cogeneration, or combined heat and power, is an energy solution which helps to reduce heating, lighting and cooling costs by extracting multiple forms of energy from a single source of fuel.

The 4016 61TRS2 engine, installed within a generator, is used to efficiently convert gas fuel into electric power, whilst exhaust heat created by the the combustion process, which would normaly be treated as waste, is subsequently used as thermal power.

The three cogeneration units run continuously in parallel to the grid supplying electrical and thermal power to the site making much more efficient use of the fuel consumed as well as the possibility to generate revenue by exporting excess electricity back to the grid.