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Combined Heat & Power
Combined Heat & Power (CHP) is also referred to as Cogeneration. In its basic form it's an energy system that produces both electrical power and thermal energy from a common source...typically a gas fired engine generator. Applications range from residential to institutional to industrial to district energy plants.
The generator, which could be based on a reciprocating engine or a combustion turbine, provides electrical output and is similar in this regard to a standby generator used in back-up power applications. The difference with a CHP system is that the bulk of the by-product waste heat from the generator engine is recovered and converted to useful thermal energy which is then utilized in the facility for space heating, domestic hot water, process water (or steam), or other loads such as swimming pool heating.
The benefit of all this is energy savings. By generating their own electricity for use in the facility, the owner directly off-sets the amount of electricity they would otherwise need to purchase from the utility company. By recovering the waste heat and converting it into useful thermal energy, an owner will reduce the run-time and fuel used to fire the facilities boilers. Because the CHP will produce both electricity and useful heat simultaneously and offset the utility costs, there are substantial energy cost savings to the owner.
Typical designs will size the CHP system to meet the "base load" and run the system 24/7 or as close to this ideal as possible. When the facility demand goes beyond what the CHP can provide, the facility then simply imports electricity from the utility like it normally would and fires their boilers as they normally would to meet the higher load conditions. The systems can be designed with single or multiple generators depending on the load requirements and application. Currently, there are some very attractive utility incentives being offered to owners interested in installing CHP in their facilities.
Fraser Engineering has many years of experience installing various sizes and configurations of CHP systems. We have built systems ranging from 65 KiloWatt/hot water/reciprocating engine based designs up to 8 MegaWatt/high pressure steam/ combustion turbine based systems. We are currently installing two of these systems in the Boston area.
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