1

By Doug Peeples

SGN News Editor

1

We tend to think of combined heat and power as a relative newcomer in the energy world, but it's far from new. The concept of using waste heat, a byproduct of generating electricity, for heating and cooling has been around since the 1880s. It's just that we're a lot better at it now and it fits in nicely with the overall smart grid initiative.

Also referred to as CHP and cogeneration, the frequently complicated technology has had its ups and downs since it was first used, but has become more popular and promising than ever. The attraction is that while CHP uses both fossil and renewable fuels to produce energy or mechanical power and (and heating and cooling), it does it much more efficiently than traditional separate heat and centralized power systems, according to the Center for Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy.

The center, based at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, offers an impressive list of benefits provided by CHP in the U.S.:

·         Produces more than 9% of the electric power produced

·         Saves users over $5 billion every year in energy costs

·         Cuts energy use almost 1.3 trillion BTUs annually

·         Reduces nitrous oxide emissions by 400,000 tons and almost a million tons of sulfur dioxide annually

·         Prevents the release of more than 35 million metric tons of carbon equivalent into the air

 Is CHP really that big a deal?

Those benefits have mostly come from large industrial plants like those used to produce paper, refining and chemical processes. But the numbers mentioned above coupled with the promise of vastly improved energy efficiency have brought CHP a lot of attention in an era when industrial distributed generation (industries developing their own on-site power generation) is growing and getting a lot of both public and private support.

Early this year, Energy Secretary Steven Chu affirmed DOE's support for CHP. In a report issued last year, the International Energy Agency not only strongly supported widespread use of cogeneration, it was adamant that immediate policy action  was required to ensure its broad adoption.

IEA report authors Jayen Veerapen and Milou Beerepoot wrote "While electricity supply is a crucial aspect of the energy debate and it will continue to remain as such, decision makers increasingly realize that heat supply is a sizeable part of the energy system. If the system is to be decarbonized, changing the heat supply will also need to be considered. Both cogeneration and renewables are technologies that are relevant to heat supply."