With gas being so cheap.....

With an efficiency of about 25% for a small natural gas generator, it more or less negates the price difference.

If you can make use of the "waste" heat, you can get about 66% efficiency from that, so 90% overall efficiency.

You can bet that those advocating microCHP will be after a FIT bung.

One of my (very smart) former CEGB colleagues, post privatisation, was convinced that there was a real commercial opportunity here based on something derived from standard lorry turbocharger technology.

Nothing seems to have come of it, perhaps because the market distortion of FIT for PV and windmills shifted the baseline. He was also (unlike me) old enough to benefit from the pretty generous redundancy offers, so perhaps he wasn't really sufficiently driven by hunger.

None at all!

With exhaust heat capture you get most of what goes in energywise. Whether the same is true money-wise is another matter. Perhaps wood powered engines make more sense financially.

NT

You're being done - you can get it for 9p from Extra Energy (normal tariff).

I had the same damn thing - EDF were of course fleecing me years ago, so changed to Scottish Power at IIRC about 12p whcih seems good at the time. Year later they said "it's going up to 15p". One comparethemarket visit armed with a full year's energy figures, 9.09p/kWh. Changeover was trivial (via comparethemarket). This is not an insignificant saving!

I bet they'll jack it up next year too!

Well - it makes slightly more sense than solar - it might actually do something useful when it's needed ;-)

Imperial College has a monster CHP - hardcore large system, wired into the 11kV IIRC - makes sense as they can use an awful lot of "waste" heat perhaps 2/3 to 3/4 of the year.

I thought IC had a nuclear reactor

Not any more. And anyway it was in Ascot.

Hmm, well the thing is that the investment might be quite steep and only paid for if you use it when gas prices are low. Apart from anything else, this could make a lot of noise if everyone started to do it. One assumes that if you then decided to sell your generated leccy back to the companies who have higher priced current, it might get awfully complicated. Brian

All been thought of years ago. Quite common commercially.

Domestic ones available too.

The main problem is that while electricity can be used or exported, often the heat is not required and must be dumped.

So, even commercially, it can only be used where there is a constant need for low grade heat to make the project viable. Eg laundry.

It becomes a lot more viable using a gas turbine and using the exhaust gases to raise steam. As in some power stations.

They often use Sterling engines, very quite.

At Silwood Park - it's not terribly convenient to ship the power to Kensington :)

Which? says that they score badly for customer satisfaction (mind you SP are apparently even worse). Any comments?

Chris

just put it on a lorry and drive down (or up) the A30.

I rather expect not to talk to them - so I value a few hundred saved as a win :)

Going to add - this is different to a mobile operator - if your phone stops working (it will at some point) you really do have to talk to them. A virtual electricity supplier I expect not to talk to at all - if I get a blackout, I'll be ringing the real supplier (UK Power in my case).

Yes. Electricity "suppliers" are in fact just billing organisations. What they're actually selling you is their ability (or lack of it) to issue bills correctly and more cheaply than the other guy, plus add-ons such as that you can manage your account online and do things like enter meter readings online, alter your DD amount, and see your historical energy usage.

I am not convinced by all these new suppliers, none of them can actually save me money if I switch, eon still comes out cheapest every time I do a comparison.