The inauguration of the high-efficiency cogeneration plant built by BrianzAcque at its corporate site in Viale Fermi, Monza took place in February 2020, the result of a synergy with Acsm Agam.
The plant supplies a combination of electricity and hot water: the former is used to feed the production lines of the San Rocco purification plant, while the latter induces heat to the city's heating network that is managed by the multiutility.
This is the result of an industrial synergy between the two companies, which had previously signed a specific agreement with the Monza municipal administration on efficiency, energy saving and on a reduced environmental impact. The cogenerator, which took nine months to build and has an electrical power of 1,550 kWh, will produce about 12,000,000 kWh per year, as much as would be needed to light a city of 200,000 inhabitants for 12 months. This amount will be entirely absorbed by the BrianzAcque's business users. The equivalent recovered thermal energy will instead be used to implement district heating in Monza, potentially serving about 500 households in the San Rocco and Triante districts.
Located in a revamped building at the heart of the San Rocco purification facility, the cogenerator cost €4.6 million including the maintenance for a period of ten years.
Thanks to the new structure, the Brianza water company will save €1,8 million a year in energy and will be able to amortise the investment in a period of about three years. The project also includes the upgrading of the sludge heating system to optimise the production of biogas by limiting the combustion of methane gas in a perspective of a circular economy.
Acsm Agam, already in the San Rocco district with the Monza Sud district heating network, extended the existing network of another 800 metres to connect the plant, placing a double insulated pipe with a diameter of 250 millimetres from Via D'Annunzio to Viale Enrico Fermi.
The network was built to be able to transport more than double the energy currently produced by the cogenerator, so that BrianzAcque and Acsm Agam can carry out a further energy recovery soon like that of using biogas to produce thermal energy.
Besides, the same network can be used to connect new buildings in Via San Rocco and in the neighbouring streets. And more. The clean energy produced will cut the emission of 3,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, to which the economic savings associated with lower fuel consumption must be added.
