Case Studies
Harvey's Tahoe Hotel and Casino
The Challenge
Harveys Resort & Casino is located at the intersection of Highway 50 and Stateline Avenue in beautiful Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Harveys is Lake Tahoe’s most spectacular 4 diamond resort hotel and has within it’s facility 740 hotel rooms and suites, a 90,000 square foot 24 hour casino, 8 restaurants, 8 cocktail lounges, cabaret showplace, specialty shops, full service health club with heated outdoor pool and Jacuzzi and a state of the art virtual reality video arcade.
Prior to this project, Harveys massive back of house was illuminated with dimly lit T-12 lamps and magnetic ballasts and the facility was in great need of Direct Digital Control upgrades to control their indoor air temperatures and become Year-2000 compliant.
Our Solution
The energy retrofit project conceived and implemented for Resort & Casino included replacement of mechanical steam traps with fixed orifice type traps, tower free cooling plate and frame cleaning and expansion, a state of the art water treatment retrofit, variable frequency drive installation on all cooling towers and variable volume air handling systems, conversion of pneumatic VAV boxes to electronic VAV boxes, CO2 monitoring, energy efficient lighting, Convention Center Direct Digital Controls (DDC) installation and Energy Management Systems Upgrades. Perhaps the exciting part of this project was the installation of a new 500 Kilowatt Cogeneration Plant at the facility. The Cogeneration Plant is comprised of four 125 Kilowatt natural gas driven supercharged reciprocating engine units and is located in the existing Basement Boiler Room. All of the excess heat produced from these units is utilized 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year. The hot water produced is utilized for heating of domestic hot water throughout the facility (hotel rooms, kitchens, etc.), heating hot water, ice melt, preheating of the steam boiler feed water and heating of the outdoor swimming pool and spa. This project also included a full maintenance and replacement contract for the Cogeneration Units.
Impact
By implementing these projects, Harveys was able to greatly enhance their facility as well as reduce maintenance burden. The steam trap conversion reduced steam trap failure as well as maintenance while saving energy, the plate and frame heat exchanger expansion allowed the facility to stay in tower free cooling much longer, the DDC upgrades allowed better control of the temperature within the facility and the new T-8 lamps and electronic ballasts increased lumen output in the back of house while saving energy.
