Caracas, Venezuela

Centro Sambil Mall is a premier shopping mall located in downtown Caracas, Venezuela. Ballard Engineering’s reputation for cogeneration system design led to mall developers hiring Ballard to provide the engineering for the power system and chilled water plant to run this mall.

The 9.5 MW power plant consists of 9 Waukesha gas fired engines that run 24 hours a day. There is heat recovery on 6 of these engines that provide hot water to run 1400 tons of absorption cooling. The chilled water plant also has 1400 tons of high efficiency centrifugal chillers. All of the electricity and chilled water for the mall is produced in the power plant. In a country where electricity is both expensive and unreliable, cogeneration can be the difference between the success and failure of a venture.