Almaden Golf & Country Club, San Jose, CA

Category: Sports and Leisure

Square Footage: 48,500 sq ft

Services Provided: HVAC, electrical, plumbing, process piping

Completion Date: 2020

Owner: Almaden Golf & Country Club

Architect: Pillars Architecture

General Contractor: Blach Construction

The Board at Almaden Golf & Country Club (AGCC) decided to make sustainability a major priority in the upgrade of their swimming pool and outdoor eating area.

Pragmatic PE worked with natural gas-fired, micro-turbine supplier to provide electrical power with the waste heat used to offset the pool and comfort heating requirements of the entire facility. AGCC decided to have Pragmatic PE engineer the entire microturbine plant as opposed to the supplier, so we studied equipment cut sheets to engineer and design the infrastructure in addition to providing guidance to the pool heater manufacturer, turbine supplier, and architect. The turbines required an elevated gas pressure which instigated coordination meetings with the local utility company (Pacific Gas & Electric) and the civil engineer. The economics of micro-turbines is more favorable when they run continuously, so Pragmatic PE investigated models of how the golf-cart batteries could be used for energy storage and how the turbines should be down-sized from the original proposal.