Read this in the paper this morning, follows on from the
goverments efforts to encourage energy efficency when they mentioned
upcoming micro CHP (I wondered then what products they were refering to)
Despite the obvious interest of widespread CHP and stirling
engine application (pity it's with natural gas) this has some
interesting implications for backfeeding the grid, if you can backfeed
from your BG stirling engine then you could supplement this with other
energy production ( biofuelled generators?, wind, solar) It's my
(somewhat uneducated) understanding that getting set up to backfeed the
grid in the UK is expensive and I imagine that this development will
work to bring those costs down.
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=409927
British Gas to launch revolutionary green boiler
By Michael Harrison, Business Editor
27 May 2003
British Gas is to become the first energy company to sell a
revolutionary new type of "green" household boiler which
environmentalists believe will make a major contribution to reducing
Britain's greenhouse gas emissions.
The company, part of Centrica, has signed a heads of agreement with the
owner of the technology, BG, to begin installing the new generation of
energy-efficient micro CHP plants in homes from next year.
The plants work by heating the home and turning exhaust gases into
electricity with the aid of a Stirling engine. The electricity is then
pumped back into the local power distribution grid. Households which
have a CHP boiler will be fitted with a new electricity meter which
registers the amount of electricity sent back into the grid and deducts
it from the final bill.
The micro CHP plants will cost £2,000, about £600 to £700 more than a
conventional condensing boiler, but will reduce the average domestic
electricity bill by about £150 a year. This means the extra cost of the
boiler will recouped in five years.
British Gas believes, however, that to make the new boilers commercially
viable, the payback period will need to be nearer four years and is
urging the Government to provide credits or direct grants under its
energy efficiency initiative.
The company plans to launch trials of the boiler later this year and
then begin offering them commercially in late 2004. It believes that by
2010 demand for the boilers could reach as many as 200,000 a year -
about 15 per cent of the annual boiler replacement market. That means
that within a decade there could be one million in use. Each boiler
would reduce household carbon dioxide output by 1.5 tonnes a year.
Energy efficiency schemes were identified in the Government's energy
White Paper this year as one of the key means of enabling Britain to
meet its emissions targets. The Government has pledged to cut CO2
emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. By 2020, the White Paper estimates,
energy efficiency measures could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 4 to 6
million tonnes a year.
The new micro CHP technology has been developed by the BG subsidiary
Microgen. The boilers will be built by the Japanese company, Rinnai.
28 May 2003 00:26
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