Micro CHP back in business

A lot has happened since the last entry on this blog, mainly due to my indolence over the past nine months. However, an update on an impressive range of micro CHP activities over that period:

Two companies, Yanmar (the Japanese Diesel engine manufacturer) and EC Power have both launched a range of improved CHP products in the UK including biodiesel variants.

CFCL (Solid Oxide Fuel Cell CHP) have announced partnerships with a number of European boiler manufacturers and energy companies, whilst Acumentrics (also SOFC) demonstrated their wall-mounted unit to energy companies in Germany.

Baxi, Remeha, Viessmann and eventually Vaillant declared their partnership with MEC (the heir to the Microgen technology) and expect to launch a major trial in 2008.

WhisperGen announced that they have finally struck a deal with MCC to manufacture their unit with mass production for Netherlands and Germany expected by mid-2008.

The Carbon Trust published another interim report on their extensive micro CHP field trial, confirming what most of us already knew, that micro CHP is environmentally viable and produces good economic paybacks for about half the homes in the UK based on current technologies (those with annual heat loss greater than 20,000kWh); they also pointed out that paybacks would be improved if householders could get decent value for their exported power, but that is going to be a tough nut to crack. It is not that energy suppliers are necessarily reluctant to offer a decent export value, indeed many of them are offering silly amounts presumably as some kind of PR initiative, but there is still no cost-effective method of trading exports within the settlement system nor even for ROCs.

Today, Disenco announced that they had successfully demonstrated their high efficiency Stirling based unit; this technology had led the field in the 1990's, but funding difficulties delayed development. Hopefully now they can move towards a commercial product, but the electrical output of 3kWe means they face challenges with capturing value of electrical generation for domestic installations where a substantial part of their output is exported.

All in all, it has been a good year for micro CHP with a number of products suitable for a range of applications reaching the market in UK, Europe, Japan and USA.