Home power plants project unveiled in Germany

[jollyGreenGiant]

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-09-home-power-plants-project-unveiled-in-germany/

BERLIN - An ambitious project was unveiled in Germany on Wednesday to install mini gas-fired power plants in people’s basements and produce as much electricity as two nuclear reactors within a year.
The Hamburg-based renewable energy group Lichtblick and its automaker partner Volkswagen say the plants would produce not only heating and hot water but also electricity, with any excess power fed into the local grid.
...

 

[DPM]

Interesting stuff. There was a trial locally of the Whispergen system, a home heating boiler (furnace?) that uses a Stirling engine to generate power from the excess capacity of the boiler; selling it back to the grid...

 

[GoFaster]

I remember hearing about something similar to this, using Fiat engines, sometime around 1980.

 

[Ski in NC]

From a thermo point of view, it makes sense. Use an IC engine to burn nat gas, generate some power for the grid, and use the rejected heat for domestic heating. A normal nat gas furnace does domestic heating, but without generating any electricity.

On a practical level, an automatically controlled nat gas generator with heat recovery and distribution is not a simple nor inexpensive machine. There are going to be ALOT of busy generator mechanics!!!

Noisy too. Nothing like cranking an engine in your basement at 2am. OK, need a sound enclosure. And oil changes. And CO monitors. Whew.

 

[NB_TDi]

Although no unit is actually described I wouldn't be so quick to assume it's a engine.

 

[Honeydew]

from the article

VW will contribute to the project by providing a gas-powered engine similar to one used in its popular Golf model.

But LBBW auto analyst Stefan Sigrist told AFP: “This is mainly a marketing offensive. It is chic for VW to bask in a greener light.”

 

[roadhard1960]

In the US about 15 years ago someone engineered a natural gas powered Briggs & Straton engine powered heat pump. I do not think they still make that. It is interesting to see how folks try to come up with new ideas and what succeeds. Energy efficient heating and cooling plants (geothermal) in the US, proper insulation, low e glazing are not selling features for many consumers.

I thought some towns in Germany had a central steam plant that took care of hot water and heating of the town's houses but I could be recalling incorrectly.

 

[Scott_DeWitt]

This is from Memory, but I believe American Honda produced a prototype natural gas powered Air Conditioner that was equivalent to a 4 ton unit and produced about 2kw of electricity. Maintenance was a key issue and it was designed that it needed an oil change every 2 years and was supposed to be in service for 15 years.

I think it's a great idea, blackouts and brownouts will be a thing of the past and the power infrastructure will be far less vulnerable to nefarious individuals having not one single point of failure (the power plants or substations). Also efficiency will increase as there would be alot less distribution losses.

 

[MrMopar]

Going from memory here . . .

I remember reading about this quite a few years ago, possibly around 2000-2002 time period. The in-home generator was an appliance sized like a dishwasher, built into the cabinets in a standard kitchen. It was a natural gas fired sterling engine, with waste heat from the sterling engine used to heat water for home heating. In winter, when the heat was to kick on, the sterling engine would be fired by natural gas to generate spare electricity which would power some things in the home or be sold back to the grid. The waste heat from the sterling engine was then to be used to heat the house through a hot water radiator system, and also used to heat water for domestic uses like showers. Supposedly the noise from the sterling engine was to be no louder than a dishwasher.

 

[DPM]

^^ that's the whispergen.

 

[diesel-dave]

you think the US would jump on this? I think the US likes huge expensive infrastructures that can fail and that can be attacked by terrorist and send us into the dark ages. I wish we'd wake up.

i think every house hold should be on track to be eco friendly efficient and self sufficient, it should be the future

there is more waste and pollution in utilities for buildings than cars agree?

 

[NB_TDi]

you think the US would jump on this? I think the US likes huge expensive infrastructures that can fail and that can be attacked by terrorist and send us into the dark ages. I wish we'd wake up.

i think every house hold should be on track to be eco friendly efficient and self sufficient, it should be the future

there is more waste and pollution in utilities for buildings than cars agree?

I do agree.

If everyone's home used solar heating, solar power and was heated by gas....I think we'd be doing a little better.

 

[roadhard1960]

Geothermal has worked well for me to keep heating and cooling costs down. No booster heat. It was not that much of a premium and the EMC had a rebate at the time. Many houses are pure energy pigs because of poor insulation installs, poor insulation even in houses built in the past 10 years, and crummy windows. I hear of folks that are conditioning houses at most twice the size of my house having energy bills 4 times what mine is. New energy codes that require more efficient heating/cooling plants in houses still does not address the inferior insulation and air infiltration problems of most houses. Cramming pink or white fiberglass into wall cavities threading behind wiring is just one of a multitude of insulating sins that costs for the life of the structure. I want square feet, not energy efficiency. Not unlike the mindset of buying cars.

 

[Dave_D]

I would argue that nuclear power is our best source for electricity from several viewpoints. A good overview of the arguments for nuclear power is available here:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/hogan3.1.1.html

I believe that nuclear power for stationary needs combined with bio-diesel for mobile power works well from an environmental standpoint.

Dave

 

[NB_TDi]

Nuclear is consistant and doesn't create greenhouse gases. While wind/sun is limited to weather. I am behind nuclear power, if done right.