FEATURE - Gas boffins promise personal power stations
Date: 07-Oct-99
Country: UK
Author: Andrew Callus
Some innovators are adapting conventional combined heat and power
technology (CHP) that recycles a generator's waste heat. Others are
miniaturising fuel cell CHP systems that produce heat and power by
chemical reaction instead of combustion.
Their aim is to offer a viable household energy alternative that would
sharply reduce, even remove, household dependence on traditional
electricity supply and distribution and salve consumers' environmental
consciences.
Although large users like factories and hospitals are already installing
their own CHPs to keep energy costs down, until now installation and
running costs have been too high to make smaller units viable.
But in August "Micro-cogeneration" took its first commercial steps when
U.S. regional utility NiSource Inc installed what it believes is the
smallest CHP unit yet, providing 28-30 kilowatts of independent power,
light and heat for an Indiana drugstore.
Meanwhile British gas company BG Plc is working on a much smaller
micro-cogenerator producing just 500-1,000 watts, 50 times smaller than
the smallest traditional CHP and designed for residential use.
Its MicroGen unit due on the market within three years will replace a
traditional household boiler and hook up to the electricity mains to
provide up to 50 percent of an average British home's electricity needs.
Another U.S. group, Plug Power Inc, is going a step further, developing
a fuel cell-based home power plant entirely independent of the
electricity grid.
Fuel cells run on hydrogen, but the availability of natural gas in urban
situations make it an ideal source of that hydrogen.
Plug Power is 10 percent owned by giant General Electric Co , set to
take a bigger stake in a $90 million flotation announced last week.
Plug Power aims to have a product on the market by 2001. But fuel cell
technology, though promising to be more than twice as efficient as
conventional power generation, is still expensive.
Plug Power expects to price units initially at between $7,500 and
$10,000 and hopes to bring the cost down through mass production in
later years.
INSTALLATION PAYBACK INSIDE THREE YEARS
BG, however, has calculated that a viable product will need to pay for
itself within three years of installation.
So it plans to keep the price of its Microgen mini-CHP units down to a
600 pound premium over the 1,000 pound plus cost of an ordinary
replacement heating boiler, and offer 150-200 pounds a year of energy
cost savings.
Households will have to keep their grid connection to cater for demand
spikes.
"The problem has been that conventional CHPs need 4,500 hours minimum
annual running time to justify investment, while a normal household
would use much less than that," said BG Technology's Microgen project
manager John Parsons.
"We are using cheaper technology to get the price down. It's a few years
away, but we are confident we will get there."
Cost saving innovations on BG's MicroGen include burning gas on the
outside of its engine rather than inside to eliminate the need to remove
accumulations of soot.
NiSource's subsidiary EnergyUSA installed its micro-cogeneration plant
in drugstore chain Walgreen Co's Chesterton, Indiana outlet, claiming
that the world's smallest CHP yet could "lower costs, improve power
quality and provide backup power while reducing the overall impact to
our environment".
A spokeswoman said the group was also working on domestic sized CHP
units.
SHOCK THE ELECTRICITY COMPANIES
The implications for electricity distributors and producers are serious,
but not terminal.
"Fuel cells in particular are developing very fast", said a senior
engineer with one of Britain's largest electricity companies. "The
temperature of the water produced is perfect for domestic heating and
hot water, there are no pollutants so its a win win win all around -
except that potentially the losers are the electricity companies if t
