Smaller, Smarter, Greener: Cummins' New Engine Boosts On-Site Power for Critical Urban Projects
Key Highlights
- The S17 Centum engine offers 1 MW of power in a footprint nearly half the size of previous models, ideal for space-constrained urban projects.
- Cummins' new engine supports decarbonization by running on renewable fuels like HVO and paraffinic fuels, reducing lifecycle CO2 emissions by up to 90%.
- The Metro Nashville Youth Empowerment Campus exemplifies modern, restorative justice facilities powered by advanced microgrid solutions, emphasizing sustainability and resilience.
SEYMOUR, Indiana—Since the beginning of technology, the true sign of evolutionary success proved that bigger was better. Bigger machines, bigger buildings, bigger grids—that was progress in those days.
And now that historical dynamic is turned on its head. Computer chips are getting smaller and more powerful, and the grid is becoming more dispersed and distributed, leading to the rise of microgrids.
Revitalization and redevelopment are focused on making the most of existing footprints. And that’s where smaller-is-better technology comes in.
This is happening on a new level in downtown Nashville, where the city’s Metro Campus for Youth Empowerment is being built. The next generation of juvenile justice centers are designed with an innovative approach to empowering youth in place to transform their lives, essentially to begin making the most of the positive opportunities which do come their way.
This type of facility needs to run around the clock, always ready day or night. On-site power resiliency is at the core of backing up grid connection.
Gaylor Electric, the electrical contractor on the Metro Nashville Campus for Youth Empowerment construction project, chose Cummins Inc. to deliver on-site power not only for the latter company’s 100-year-plus history of engine and gen-set achievement, but also for something new and spatially designed so that it is the right fit for this specific project.
Cummins has created a new product, the 17-liter S17 Centum engine, to provide a sizable leap in on-site standby power capacity at 1 MW per unit within a smaller footprint ideal for mission-critical metropolitan facilities. Centum is a nod to the company’s 106-year history.
“Nobody wants to give up space on these projects,” Ed Droeger, assistant to the CEO of Gaylor Electric, told EnergyTech.com during an interview at Cummins’ engine plant in Seymour, Indiana. “There’s nothing so important as space.”
Gaylor Electric is acquiring the first three Cummins S17s ever made to provide an interconnected 3 MW of standby power for the Metro Nashville Campus for Youth Empowerment. The S17 Centum replaces the much larger, 30-liter QST in Cummins’ standby power product line, but in a gen-set footprint that is yards smaller and more than 700 kilograms lighter.
Delivering the S17 Centrum to its first customer is the start of a new product for customers trying to maximize space constraints, but it’s also the fitting end of a five-year collaborative process interconnecting nearly all engineering groups within Cummins' energy group. In other words, it’s a deliberate game changer in a world which demands game changing all the time.
“The needs of speed to market and the changes in customer need are evolving faster and faster all the time,” Ray Shute, chief engineer on the S17 Centrum, said during the product unveiling at the company’s Seymour Engine Plant.
“Where we think the S17 fills a great opportunity, is any facility that is space constrained, where there is a critical need for upgrade within the same existing footprint,” Shute said. “This can enable reduced installation costs and reduced need for modification to the existing infrastructure.”
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The S17 could prove, yet again, that ample power capacity can be delivered in smaller packages, but getting tighter does not mean getting too simple. Developing this new product forced Cummins to think differently, and act ever more collaboratively, as it fine-tuned the final model for market entry this year.
Fuel Diversity with a Long-Term Focus on Decarbonization
In keeping with Cummins’ Destination Zero emissions goals, the S17 Centum can run on 100% hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) and paraffinic fuels. The primary fuel is Tier 2-rated diesel which works environmentally because the engines will have limited run times in their standby status, and even then it is built to reduce lifecycle CO2 emissions by as much as 90%.
Cummins’ chief engineer on the S17 was excited to tackle something so new so far into his multi-decade career.
“It’s actually a really new element for me, more so having the opportunity and ability for our team to be able to start with something that had never been delivered before,” Shute said. “To go through the development and execution of that together, is the proudest part of the journey.”
The toughest part, perhaps, was figuring out how to mate a 17-liter engine—nearly half the size of the predecessor technology—to the electricity generators produced by Cummins at their manufacturing facility in Fridley, Minnesota.
Eric Young, the product validation leader at Cummins who worked closely with Shute and his team on shaping the S17 Centum engine and gen-set configuration, pointed out that developing a innovative new product more than ever benefits from learnings within the company’s century-plus of engineering architecture.
“So we have all that at our disposal, from power cycling to fuel injection geometry,” Young said. “Achieving power design is rooted in the architecture.”
Indeed, bringing the smaller and lighter engine in tandem with the alternator and generation side required adaptation on both sides.
“That was a challenge we knew from the beginning,” Shute said. “The key adaptation was the optimization of the interfacing adapter between the flywheel housing and the alternator.”
Problem solved with the result surprising even Cummins colleagues who were aware of the work on the S17 along the long road to development.
“It’s really impressive to reach that same power from a package almost half the size,” noted Elaine Miao, part of the Cummins marketing leadership team for the S17 Centum.
The S17 Centum is new to market but girded for the long haul by more than 25,000 hours of testing and validation.
The 270,000-square-foot Metro Nashville Campus for Youth Empowerment, designed by DLR Group, is now under construction and scheduled for completion by 2027. Replacing the aged Juvenile Justice Center near Nissan Stadium, the Campus for Youth Empowerment is being built for a mission to provide holistic and restorative justice for children, families and communities by consolidating court activities, offering deeper counseling and respite care.
Rethinking the pathways to youth justice is a worthy journey. And providing power in smaller, cleaner packages is completely in line with that future idealism shared by most of the power generation industry.
“How can we make it easier for people to access the 1-MW power node?” Cummins chief engineer Shute pointed out.
Who needs that? Well, how about public services, hospitals, non-profits and many more.
“As the use cares for these applications change and also the operational requirements, this engine is protected for that,” Shute said. “We will be ready when it happens.”
About the Author
Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge Managing Editor
Managing Editor
For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].
I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023.
I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future.
Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.