A Florida hotel takes the initiative in emergency preparedness.
By Rosalie E. Leposky
In 2005, after Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma caused extended power outages in southern Florida, the management of the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables decided to install a backup generating system with enough capacity to meet all of the 276-room hotel’s electricity needs.
That system still is being planned, but in the interim, to augment its existing emergency-power–generating capacity, the Biltmore kept a leased 2-MW generator on hand for the six months of the 2006 hurricane season and will do so again in 2007 if the permanent system isn’t yet in place.
The Biltmore opened in 1926 and has served through the years as a de facto hurricane accommodation for local residents. The planned new permanent generator will allow guests to weather a storm—or at least its aftermath—in unprecedented comfort. At other times, the new generator will supply a constant flow of electricity when grid power from Florida Power & Light Co. (FPL) may be interrupted.
“We recognize that in times of crisis we can provide a needed service to the community,” says Dennis Doucette, the Biltmore’s general manager. “There has never been an issue of how to attract potential disaster guests. We realized that a significant number of people would be interested in a nominal-cost, advance-booking arrangement we call the Priority Access Membership Program.”
The program provides preferred access to accommodations in case of a storm, beginning when the National Hurricane Center issues a hurricane watch 48 hours prior to a predicted landfall or when Miami-Dade County officials order evacuations. Depending on the size and type of accommodations being reserved, membership fees range from $33 to $93 per week, with a 16-week minimum guarantee.
If people holding these reservations actually use them, room rates range from $199 to $1,799 per day, with a minimum two-night booking. The rates are discounted in comparison to normal high-occupancy periods.
“We market this service through general hotel reservation records, the membership of our Cellar Club [a wine-tasting club] and Premier Club [a hotel membership program], and residents in low-lying areas,” Doucette says.
“Additionally, we recognize that a large number of other local residents may be without power and might want to stay at the Biltmore.”
Fuel of Choice
Coral Gables, a city of 43,000 that adjoins Miami, owns the Biltmore. David Brown, the Coral Gables city manager, says Miami-based Seaway Hotels Corp., the hotel’s management company, is responsible for all of its maintenance, repairs, and new construction.
“Seaway told us their plan to lease a generator that would support the hotel needs when the FPL grid failed,” Brown says. “During a typical hurricane season, grid power to the hotel may fail several times.”
Brown says the city encouraged Seaway to obtain a generator large enough to support 100% of the hotel’s needs. Natural gas is the fuel of choice because it pollutes less than diesel and because obtaining diesel fuel after a hurricane can be difficult. “Following a hurricane, gas service is interrupted only when the root systems of toppled trees interfere with the gas lines,” says Juancarlo Vega, project coordinator in the construction operations department of Miami-based Florida City Gas.
The Biltmore already has a 2-inch, underground, natural-gas feeder line measuring 620 feet in length. It crosses beneath a service road and enters behind the building. Now the hotel is considering installation of a new 4-inch line.
“Two gas mainlines intersect in front of the Biltmore Hotel,” Vega says. “An older 2-inch line is under Anastasia Avenue, and a new 4-inch main installed in 2001 is buried under Cordova Street. After the city issues building permits, it would take about a week to install a new 4-inch feeder line from the street.”
Seaway Hotels Corp. executives and experts from affiliated groups, including Port Newark Warehouses in New Jersey, are helping to select the Biltmore’s generator. The leading candidate is a QSV91 series natural-gas generator set from Cummins Power Generation.
“We use Cummins natural-gas engines with refrigerator compressor generator systems at our New Jersey warehouses,” says Gerard Von Dohlen, a Seaway Hotels director who is president of Port Newark Refrigerated Warehouses. “Each engine runs about 7,000 hours a year. Two of the engines are 10 years old, and the other two are two years old.”
Seaway has signed a development agreement to test Cummins’s engines and water pumps. “Because of our heavy generator use and our close corporate relationship with Cummins, they know us and we know them. We get good service attention,” Von Dohlen says.
Load-Shedding Participation
The Biltmore Hotel expects to use its generator significantly less—about 100 hours per year—even though it will participate in FPL’s local load-shedding program.
“Load shedding is designed to integrate local energy-producing generators into the power grid,” says Von Dohlen. “New Jersey is part of the oldest and largest grid, the PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission organization that also includes Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.”
PJM serves about 51 million people and dispatches 164,634 MW of generating capacity across 56,070 miles of transmission lines. It has more than 400 market participants. Since its regional market began in 1997, PJM has administered nearly $52 billion in energy and energy-service trades. Depending on demand, PJM also may buy or sell energy to other regions.
“In south Florida, we know there are times when FPL may want to shed users who have alternate energy supplies for periods of time,” says Von Dohlen. “We hope to create a system at The Biltmore so that in a crisis FPL can take the hotel off the grid. the Biltmore’s reward for participating in this shedding program is a reduced energy tariff.”
Van Dohlen says diesel generators are less expensive to operate than those burning natural gas. “Diesel takes the load better but offers a dirtier burn,” he says. “The gas generators we are considering are capable of continuous, clean, lean burns.”
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| Since the natural-gas generator could not be installed for the 2006 hurricane
season, the hotel rented a 2-MW Caterpillar diesel generator housed in a trailer. |
Interim Solution
Because the installation of a new permanent natural-gas generator could not be completed in time for the 2006 hurricane season, the Biltmore rented a portable generator from Pantropic Power Products Inc., a Miami-based Caterpillar distributor. Pantropic provided a 2-MW Caterpillar diesel generator housed in a trailer. “It’s more than ample for the hotel’s 1.4-megawatt peak summer demand,” says Edmundo Perez, the hotel’s chief engineer.
Housed in a trailer across the rear service road, about 150 feet from the building, the Caterpillar generator is hidden from the hotel’s 10 lighted tennis courts by a tall hedge of ficus trees. That’s where the permanent natural-gas generator will be installed. Two-hundred feet of aboveground cables wind in an indirect path, avoiding heavy vehicles using the service road, to connect the generator to the hotel’s electrical system. The permanent natural-gas generator will have 150 feet of buried cables to make that connection.
Inside the hotel, an Onan 350-kW generator set installed in the 1980s in a dedicated, ground-floor room supports the hotel’s emergency life-safety services, including lights in common areas, emergency lighting in corridors and stairways, domestic water pumps, solid-waste lift stations, fire alarms, and smoke detectors.
“The Onan was designed with an automatic switch that kicks in immediately when grid power to the hotel fails,” says Edmundo Perez, the Biltmore’s chief engineer. “We do an annual load-bank test to make sure it performs as expected.”
By contrast, the temporary generator lacks automatic connections to the hotel’s power-distribution system. Its cables sit on the floor near the hotel’s transfer switch. Had it been necessary, four men would have connected the cables after first disconnecting everything from the grid to ensure that the generator wouldn’t run in parallel with FPL’s service. “That process takes 60 to 90 minutes,” Perez explains. “The job requires a certified electrical contractor. We did it once, on a day with low occupancy. It involved interrupting power to the entire building. Then we used batteries to crank up the generator.
“For the 2007 hurricane season, we’re planning to install an automatic transfer switch and underground cable connected to the load side of the switchgear.”
During the 2006 hurricane season, the Onan would have operated as a backup to the temporary Caterpillar generator, and it will serve as a backup to the planned permanent Cummins generator.
Fuel Issues
The hotel’s 350-kW Onan generator uses 70 gallons of fuel per hour (1,680 gallons per day), and the temporary Caterpillar generator uses about 100 gallons of fuel per hour (2,400 gallons per day).
During the 2006 hurricane season, the hotel had 10,000 gallons of diesel fuel on hand—2,000 in a tank for the Caterpillar generator; 2,000 in an underground tank near the hotel’s loading dock for the Onan generator; and another 6,000 gallons stored underground in the Biltmore Golf Course maintenance area on the far side of the links from the hotel. That was enough to run the Caterpillar generator for slightly more than four days or the Onan generator for almost six days. “I received fuel on the second day after Katrina and Wilma,” Perez reports.
“We have arrangements with a local fuel company to provide us with additional fuel as soon as Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale reopens,” says Van Dohlen. “Typically that happens within 24 hours of a hurricane, but we may have to wait to be refueled. We like the idea of natural gas because it doesn’t have to be stored.”
A separate emergency generator serves the Conference Center of the Americas, located adjacent to the Biltmore Country Club building. The conference center’s 250-kW generator, a Caterpillar 3306 purchased in 2000, occupies a dedicated ground-floor room near the loading dock. It has a 500-gallon diesel tank and an automatic switch that activates when the conference center’s power fails.
Rosalie E. Leposky specializes in transportation, travel, and development issues.
DE - March/April 2007
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