Micro Cogen
I was thinking of writing about the NSA domestic spying scandal, but I feel like by this time you’ve heard plenty about it. I’ll just throw in this talking point: The right-wing echo chamber often points out that “if you’re not talking to terrorists, you don’t have anything to hide. . . ” This week, Al Gonzalez went before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify. When our very own Sen. Feingold requested that he be sworn in and give his testimony under oath, the republicans on the committee threw a tantrum and refused the motion. (Just like they did when the Oil execs testified) It makes you wonder, if you’re going to tell the truth, why worry about testifying under oath?
But enough of that.
I learned about a pretty cool new device last week: the micro cogeneration unit. Here’s the skinny: Most (~65%) of the energy content in the coal or natural gas that goes into a powerplant goes out as waste heat. Find a way to utilize that waste heat and you significantly increase the power plant efficiency.
This is called co-generation. Here in Madison, MG&E recently built a natural gas cogen plant on the UW campus. Some of the waste heat from the gas turbines is used to generate steam used to heat the campus. The combined efficiency is close to 70% when everything is running full-tilt. Pretty good!
Now picture a micro-sized gas turbine in your basement, with the waste heat used to heat your home: Micro Cogen! Instead of burning natural gas in a furnace and buying electricity from the electric company, a micro cogen unit burns natural gas to generate electricty, heat your home, and sells any surplus electricity back to the utility. Companies selling these devices claim efficienies of 80% or more.
Honda has a unit already on sale in Japan and plans on bringing it to the U.S. this fall. Sounds like a pretty cool idea.
Filed under Uncategorized : Comments (0) : Feb 7th, 2006 by tadfad
