Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine[1] or power station to

generate electricity and useful heatat the same time. Trigeneration or combined cooling, heat and
power (CCHP) refers to the simultaneous generation of electricity and useful heating and cooling
from the combustion of a fuel or a solar heat collector.
Cogeneration is a thermodynamically efficient use of fuel. In separate production of electricity, some
energy must be discarded as waste heat, but in cogeneration this thermal energy is put to use. All
thermal power plants emit heat during electricity generation, which can be released into the natural
environment through cooling towers, flue gas, or by other means. In contrast, CHP captures some or
all of the by-product for heating, either very close to the plant, orespecially
in Scandinavia and Eastern Europeas hot water for district heatingwith temperatures ranging from
approximately 80 to 130 C. This is also called combined heat and power district
heating (CHPDH). Small CHP plants are an example of decentralized energy.[2] By-product heat at
moderate temperatures (100180 C, 212356 F) can also be used in absorption refrigerators for
cooling.
The supply of high-temperature heat first drives a gas or steam turbine-powered generator and the
resulting low-temperature waste heat is then used for water or space heating as described in
cogeneration. At smaller scales (typically below 1 MW) a gas engine or diesel engine may be used.
Trigeneration differs from cogeneration in that the waste heat is used for both heating and cooling,
typically in anabsorption refrigerator. CCHP systems can attain higher overall efficiencies than
cogeneration or traditional power plants. In the United States, the application of trigeneration in
buildings is called building cooling, heating and power (BCHP). Heating and cooling output may
operate concurrently or alternately depending on need and system construction.
Cogeneration was practiced in some of the earliest installations of electrical generation. Before
central stations distributed power, industries generating their own power used exhaust steam for
process heating. Large office and apartment buildings, hotels and stores commonly generated their
own power and used waste steam for building heat. Due to the high cost of early purchased power,
these CHP operations continued for many years after utility electricity became available. [3]
Contents
[hide]

1 Overview

2 Types of plants
o

2.1 MicroCHP

2.2 Trigeneration

2.3 Combined heat and power district heating

2.4 Industrial CHP

2.4.1 Utility pressures versus self generating industrial

2.5 Heat recovery steam generators

3 Comparison with a heat pump

4 Distributed generation

5 Thermal efficiency

6 Costs

7 History
o

7.1 Cogeneration in Europe

7.2 Cogeneration in the United States

7.2.1 Diffusion

8 Applications in power generation systems

o

8.1 Non-renewable

8.2 Renewable

9 See also

10 Further reading

11 References

Overview[edit]

Masned CHP power station in Denmark. This station burns straw as fuel. The adjacent greenhouses are
heated by district heating from the plant.

Thermal power plants (including those that use fissile elements or burn coal, petroleum, or natural
gas), and heat engines in general, do not convert all of their thermal energy into electricity. In most
heat engines, a bit more than half is lost as excess heat (see: Second law of
thermodynamics and Carnot's theorem). By capturing the excess heat, CHP uses heat that would be
wasted in a conventional power plant, potentially reaching an efficiency of up to 80%,[4] for the best
conventional plants. This means that less fuel needs to be consumed to produce the same amount
of useful energy.
Steam turbines for cogeneration are designed for extraction of steam at lower pressures after it has
passed through a number of turbine stages, or they may be designed for final exhaust at back
pressure (non-condensing), or both.[5] A typical power generation turbine in apaper mill may have
extraction pressures of 160 psig (1.103 MPa) and 60 psig (0.41 MPa). A typical back pressure may
be 60 psig (0.41 MPa). In practice these pressures are custom designed for each facility. The
extracted or exhaust steam is used for process heating, such as drying paper, evaporation, heat for
chemical reactions or distillation. Steam at ordinary process heating conditions still has a
considerable amount of enthalpy that could be used for power generation, so cogeneration has lost
opportunity cost. Conversely, simply generating steam at process pressure instead of high enough
pressure to generate power at the top end also has lost opportunity cost. (See: Steam
turbine#Steam supply and exhaust conditions) The capital and operating cost of high pressure
boilers, turbines and generators are substantial, and this equipment is normally
operated continuously, which usually limits self-generated power to large-scale operations.

A cogeneration plant in Metz,France. The 45MW boiler uses waste wood biomass as energy source, and
provides electricity and heat for 30,000dwellings.

Some tri-cycle plants have used a combined cycle in which several thermodynamic cycles produced
electricity, then a heating system was used as acondenser of the power plant's bottoming cycle. For
example, the RU-25 MHD generator in Moscow heated a boiler for a conventional steam powerplant,
whose condensate was then used for space heat. A more modern system might use a gas
turbine powered by natural gas, whose exhaust powers a steam plant, whose condensate provides
heat. Tri-cycle plants can have thermal efficiencies above 80%.
The viability of CHP (sometimes termed utilisation factor), especially in smaller CHP installations,
depends on a good baseload of operation, both in terms of an on-site (or near site) electrical
demand and heat demand. In practice, an exact match between the heat and electricity needs rarely
exists. A CHP plant can either meet the need for heat (heat driven operation) or be run as a power
plant with some use of its waste heat, the latter being less advantageous in terms of its utilisation
factor and thus its overall efficiency. The viability can be greatly increased where opportunities
forTrigeneration exist. In such cases, the heat from the CHP plant is also used as a primary energy
source to deliver cooling by means of an absorption chiller.
CHP is most efficient when heat can be used on-site or very close to it. Overall efficiency is reduced
when the heat must be transported over longer distances. This requires heavily insulated pipes,
which are expensive and inefficient; whereas electricity can be transmitted along a comparatively
simple wire, and over much longer distances for the same energy loss.
A car engine becomes a CHP plant in winter when the reject heat is useful for warming the interior of
the vehicle. The example illustrates the point that deployment of CHP depends on heat uses in the
vicinity of the heat engine.
Thermally enhanced oil recovery (TEOR) plants often produce a substantial amount of excess
electricity. After generating electricity, these plants pump leftover steam into heavy oil wells so that
the oil will flow more easily, increasing production. TEOR cogeneration plants in Kern County,
California produce so much electricity that it cannot all be used locally and is transmitted toLos
Angeles[citation needed].
CHP is one of the most cost-efficient methods of reducing carbon emissions from heating systems in
cold climates [6] and is recognized to be the most energy efficient method of transforming energy from
fossil fuels or biomass into electric power.[7] Cogeneration plants are commonly found in district
heating systems of cities, central heating systems from buildings, hospitals, prisons and are
commonly used in the industry in thermal production processes for process water, cooling, steam
production or CO2 fertilization.

Types of plants[edit]

Topping cycle plants primarily produce electricity from a steam turbine. The exhausted steam is then
condensed and the low temperature heat released from this condensation is utilized for e.g. district
heating or water desalination.
Bottoming cycle plants produce high temperature heat for industrial processes, then a waste heat
recovery boiler feeds an electrical plant. Bottoming cycle plants are only used when the industrial
process requires very high temperatures such as furnaces for glass and metal manufacturing, so
they are less common.
Large cogeneration systems provide heating water and power for an industrial site or an entire town.
Common CHP plant types are:

Gas turbine CHP plants using the waste heat in the flue gas of gas turbines. The fuel used is
typically natural gas

Gas engine CHP plants use a reciprocating gas engine which is generally more competitive
than a gas turbine up to about 5 MW. The gaseous fuel used is normally natural gas. These
plants are generally manufactured as fully packaged units that can be installed within a
plantroom or external plant compound with simple connections to the site's gas supply and
electrical distribution and heating systems. Typical outputs and efficiences see

[8]

Typical large

example see [9]

Biofuel engine CHP plants use an adapted reciprocating gas engine or diesel engine,
depending upon which biofuel is being used, and are otherwise very similar in design to a Gas
engine CHP plant. The advantage of using a biofuel is one of reduced hydrocarbon
fuel consumption and thus reduced carbon emissions. These plants are generally manufactured
as fully packaged units that can be installed within a plantroom or external plant compound with
simple connections to the site's electrical distribution and heating systems. Another variant is
the wood gasifier CHP plant whereby a wood pellet or wood chip biofuel is gasified in a zero
oxygen high temperature environment; the resulting gas is then used to power the gas engine.
Typical smaller size biogas plant see [10]

Combined cycle power plants adapted for CHP

Molten-carbonate fuel cells and solid oxide fuel cells have a hot exhaust, very suitable for
heating.

Steam turbine CHP plants that use the heating system as the steam condenser for the steam
turbine.

Nuclear power plants, similar to other steam turbine power plants, can be fitted with
extractions in the turbines to bleed partially expanded steam to a heating system. With a heating
system temperature of 95 C it is possible to extract about 10 MW heat for every MW electricity
lost. With a temperature of 130 C the gain is slightly smaller, about 7 MW for every MWe lost.[11]

Smaller cogeneration units may use a reciprocating engine or Stirling engine. The heat is removed
from the exhaust and radiator. The systems are popular in small sizes because small gas and diesel
engines are less expensive than small gas- or oil-fired steam-electric plants.
Some cogeneration plants are fired by biomass,[12] or industrial and municipal solid
waste (see incineration). Some CHP plants utilize waste gas as the fuel for electricity and heat
generation. Waste gases can be gas from animal waste, landfill gas, gas from coal mines, sewage
gas, and combustible industrial waste gas.[13]
Some cogeneration plants combine gas and solar photovoltaic generation to further improve
technical and environmental performance.[14] Such hybrid systems can be scaled down to the building
level[15] and even individual homes.[16]

MicroCHP[edit]
Micro combined heat and power or 'Micro cogeneration" is a so-called distributed energy
resource (DER). The installation is usually less than 5 kWe in a house or small business. Instead of
burning fuel to merely heat space or water, some of the energy is converted to electricity in addition
to heat. This electricity can be used within the home or business or, if permitted by the grid
management, sold back into the electric power grid.
Delta-ee consultants stated in 2013 that with 64% of global sales the fuel cell micro-combined heat
and power passed the conventional systems in sales in 2012.[17] 20.000 units where sold in Japan in
2012 overall within the Ene Farm project. With a Lifetime of around 60,000 hours. For PEM fuel cell
units, which shut down at night, this equates to an estimated lifetime of between ten and fifteen
years.[18] For a price of $22,600 before installation.[19] For 2013 a state subsidy for 50,000 units is in
place.[18]
The development of small-scale CHP systems has provided the opportunity for in-house power
backup of residential-scale photovoltaic (PV) arrays.[16] The results of a 2011 study show that a
PV+CHP hybrid system not only has the potential to radically reduce energy waste in the status quo
electrical and heating systems, but it also enables the share of solar PV to be expanded by about a
factor of five.[16] In some regions, in order to reduce waste from excess heat, an absorption chiller has
been proposed to utilize the CHP-produced thermal energy for cooling of PV-CHP
system. [20] These trigeneration+photovoltaic systems have the potential to save even more energy
and further reduce emissions compared to conventional sources of power, heating and cooling. [21]

MicroCHP installations use five different technologies: microturbines, internal

combustion engines, stirling engines, closed cycle steam engines and fuel cells. One author
indicated in 2008 that MicroCHP based on Stirling engines is the most cost effective of the so-called
microgeneration technologies in abating carbon emissions;[22] A 2013 UK report from Ecuity
Consulting stated that MCHP is the most cost-effective method of utilising gas to generate energy at
the domestic level.[23][24] however, advances in reciprocation engine technology are adding efficiency
to CHP plant, particularly in the biogas field.[25] As both MiniCHP and CHP have been shown to
reduce emissions [26] they could play a large role in the field of CO2 reduction from buildings, where
more than 14% of emissions can be saved using CHP in buildings.[27] The ability to reduce emissions
is particularly strong for new communities in emission intensive grids that utilize a combination of
CHP and photovoltaic systems.[28]

Trigeneration[edit]
A plant producing electricity, heat and cold is called a trigeneration[29] or polygeneration plant.
Cogeneration systems linked to absorption chillers use waste heat for refrigeration.[30]

Combined heat and power district heating[edit]

See also: District heating
In the United States, Consolidated Edison distributes 66 billion kilograms of 350 F (180 C) steam
each year through its seven cogeneration plants to 100,000 buildings in Manhattanthe biggest
steam district in the United States. The peak delivery is 10 million pounds per hour (or approximately
2.5 GW).[31][32] Other major cogeneration companies in the United States include Recycled Energy
Development,[33] and leading advocates include Tom Casten and Amory Lovins.

Industrial CHP[edit]
Cogeneration is still common in pulp and paper mills, refineries and chemical plants. In this
"industrial cogeneration/CHP", the heat is typically recovered at higher temperatures (above 100 deg
C) and used for process steam or drying duties. This is more valuable and flexible than low-grade
waste heat, but there is a slight loss of power generation. The increased focus onsustainability has
made industrial CHP more attractive, as it substantially reduces carbon footprint compared to
generating steam or burning fuel on-site and importing electric power from the grid.
Utility pressures versus self generating industrial[edit]
Industrial cogeneration plants normally operate at much lower boiler pressures than utilities. Among
the reasons are: 1) Cogeneration plants face possible contamination of returned condensate.
Because boiler feed water from cogeneration plants has much lower return rates than 100%
condensing power plants, industries usually have to treat proportionately more boiler make up water.
Boiler feed water must be completely oxygen free and de-mineralized, and the higher the pressure
the more critical the level of purity of the feed water.[5] 2) Utilities are typically larger scale power than

industry, which helps offset the higher capital costs of high pressure. 3) Utilities are less likely to
have sharp load swings than industrial operations, which deal with shutting down or starting up units
that may represent a significant percent of either steam or power demand.

Heat recovery steam generators[edit]

A heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) is a steam boiler that uses hot exhaust gases from the gas
turbines or reciprocating engines in a CHP plant to heat up water and generate steam. The steam, in
turn, drives a steam turbine or is used in industrial processes that require heat.
HRSGs used in the CHP industry are distinguished from conventional steam generators by the
following main features:

The HRSG is designed based upon the specific features of the gas turbine or reciprocating
engine that it will be coupled to.

Since the exhaust gas temperature is relatively low, heat transmission is accomplished
mainly through convection.

The exhaust gas velocity is limited by the need to keep head losses down. Thus, the
transmission coefficient is low, which calls for a large heating surface area.

Since the temperature difference between the hot gases and the fluid to be heated (steam or
water) is low, and with the heat transmission coefficient being low as well, the evaporator and
economizer are designed with plate fin heat exchangers.

Comparison with a heat pump[edit]

A heat pump may be compared with a CHP unit, in that for a condensing steam plant, as it switches
to produced heat, then electrical power is lost or becomes unavailable, just as the power used in a
heat pump becomes unavailable. Typically for every unit of power lost, then about 6 units of heat are
made available at about 90 C. Thus CHP has an effective Coefficient of Performance
(COP) compared to a heat pump of 6.[34] It is noteworthy that the unit for the CHP is lost at the high
voltage network and therefore incurs no losses, whereas the heat pump unit is lost at the low voltage
part of the network and incurs on average a 6% loss. Because the losses are proportional to the
square of the current, during peak periods losses are much higher than this and it is likely that
widespread i.e. city wide application of heat pumps would cause overloading of the distribution and
transmission grids unless they are substantially reinforced.
It is also possible to run a heat driven operation combined with a heat pump, where the excess
electricity (as heat demand is the defining factor on utilization) is used to drive a heat pump. As heat

demand increases, more electricity is generated to drive the heat pump, with the waste heat also
heating the heating fluid.

Distributed generation[edit]
Trigeneration has its greatest benefits when scaled to fit buildings or complexes of buildings where
electricity, heating and cooling are perpetually needed. Such installations include but are not limited
to: data centers, manufacturing facilities, universities, hospitals, military complexes and colleges.
Localized trigeneration has addition benefits as described by distributed generation. Redundancy of
power in mission critical applications, lower power usage costs and the ability to sell electrical power
back to the local utility are a few of the major benefits. Even for small buildings such as individual
family homes trigeneration systems provide benefits over cogeneration because of increased energy
utilization.[35] This increased efficiency can also provide significant reduced greenhouse gas
emissions, particularly for new communities.[36]
Most industrial countries generate the majority of their electrical power needs in large centralized
facilities with capacity for large electrical power output. These plants have excellent economies of
scale, but usually transmit electricity long distances resulting in sizable losses, negatively affect the
environment. Large power plants can use cogeneration or trigeneration systems only when sufficient
need exists in immediate geographic vicinity for an industrial complex, additional power plant or a
city. An example of cogeneration with trigeneration applications in a major city is the New York City
steam system.

Thermal efficiency[edit]
Every heat engine is subject to the theoretical efficiency limits of the Carnot cycle. When the fuel
is natural gas, a gas turbine following the Brayton cycle is typically used.[37] Mechanical energy from
the turbine drives an electric generator. The low-grade (i.e. low temperature) waste heat rejected by
the turbine is then applied to space heating or cooling or to industrial processes. Cooling is achieved
by passing the waste heat to an absorption chiller.
Thermal efficiency in a trigeneration system is defined as:

Where:
= Thermal efficiency
= Total work output by all systems
= Total heat input into the system

Typical trigeneration models have losses as in any system. The energy distribution
below is represented as a percent of total input energy: [38]
Electricity = 45%
Heat + Cooling = 40%
Heat Losses = 13%
Electrical Line Losses = 2%
Conventional central coal- or nuclear-powered power stations
convert only about 33% of their input heat to electricity. The
remaining 67% emerges from the turbines as low-grade waste heat
with no significant local uses so it is usually rejected to the
environment. These low conversion efficiencies strongly suggest
that productive uses could be found for this waste heat, and in
some countries these plants do collect byproduct heat that can be
sold to customers.
But if no practical uses can be found for the waste heat from a
central power station, e.g., due to distance from potential
customers, then moving generation to where the waste heat can
find uses may be of great benefit. Even though the efficiency of a
small distributed electrical generator may be lower than a large
central power plant, the use of its waste heat for local heating and
cooling can result in an overall use of the primary fuel supply as
great as 80%. This provides substantial financial and environmental
benefits.

Costs[edit]
Typically, for a gas-fired plant the fully installed cost per kW
electrical is around 400/kW, which is comparable with large
central power stations.[10]
See also Cost of electricity by source

History[edit]
Cogeneration in Europe[edit]

A cogeneration thermal power plant in Ferrera Erbognone (PV), Italy

The EU has actively incorporated cogeneration into its energy

policy via the CHP Directive. In September 2008 at a hearing of the
European Parliaments Urban Lodgment Intergroup, Energy
Commissioner Andris Piebalgs is quoted as saying, security of
supply really starts with energy efficiency.[39] Energy efficiency and
cogeneration are recognized in the opening paragraphs of the
European Unions Cogeneration Directive 2004/08/EC. This
directive intends to support cogeneration and establish a method
for calculating cogeneration abilities per country. The development
of cogeneration has been very uneven over the years and has
been dominated throughout the last decades by national
circumstances.
The European Union generates 11% of its electricity using
cogeneration.[40] However, there is large difference between
Member States with variations of the energy savings between 2%
and 60%. Europe has the three countries with the worlds most
intensive cogeneration economies: Denmark, the Netherlands and
Finland.[41] Of the 28.46 TWh of electrical power generated by
conventional thermal power plants in Finland in 2012, 81.80% was
cogeneration.[42]
Other European countries are also making great efforts to increase
efficiency. Germany reported that at present, over 50% of the
countrys total electricity demand could be provided through
cogeneration. So far, Germany has set the target to double its
electricity cogeneration from 12.5% of the countrys electricity to
25% of the countrys electricity by 2020 and has passed supporting
legislation accordingly.[43] The UK is also actively supporting
combined heat and power. In light of UKs goal to achieve a 60%

reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, the government has

set the target to source at least 15% of its government electricity
use from CHP by 2010.[44] Other UK measures to encourage CHP
growth are financial incentives, grant support, a greater regulatory
framework, and government leadership and partnership.
According to the IEA 2008 modeling of cogeneration expansion for
the G8 countries, the expansion of cogeneration in France,
Germany, Italy and the UK alone would effectively double the
existing primary fuel savings by 2030. This would increase
Europes savings from todays 155.69 Twh to 465 Twh in 2030. It
would also result in a 16% to 29% increase in each countrys total
cogenerated electricity by 2030.
Governments are being assisted in their CHP endeavors by
organizations like COGEN Europe who serve as an information hub
for the most recent updates within Europes energy policy. COGEN
is Europes umbrella organization representing the interests of the
cogeneration industry.
The European publicprivate partnership Fuel Cells and Hydrogen
Joint Undertaking Seventh Framework Programme project ene.field
deploys in 2017[45] up 1,000 residential fuel cell Combined Heat and
Power (micro-CHP) installations in 12 states. Per 2012 the first 2
installations have taken place.[46][47][48]

Cogeneration in the United States[edit]

A 250 MW cogeneration plant inCambridge, Massachusetts

Perhaps the first modern use of energy recycling was done

by Thomas Edison. His 1882 Pearl Street Station, the worlds first
commercial power plant, was a combined heat and power plant,
producing both electricity and thermal energy while using waste

heat to warm neighboring buildings.[49]Recycling allowed Edisons

plant to achieve approximately 50 percent efficiency.
By the early 1900s, regulations emerged to promote rural
electrification through the construction of centralized plants
managed by regional utilities. These regulations not only promoted
electrification throughout the countryside, but they also discouraged
decentralized power generation, such as cogeneration.
As Recycled Energy Development CEO Sean Casten testified to
Congress, they even went so far as to make it illegal for non-utilities
to sell power.[50]
By 1978, Congress recognized that efficiency at central power
plants had stagnated and sought to encourage improved efficiency
with the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), which
encouraged utilities to buy power from other energy producers.
Diffusion[edit]
Cogeneration plants proliferated, soon producing about 8% of all
energy in the United States.[51] However, the bill left implementation
and enforcement up to individual states, resulting in little or nothing
being done in many parts of the country.[citation needed]
In 2008 Tom Casten, chairman of Recycled Energy Development,
said that "We think we could make about 19 to 20 percent of U.S.
electricity with heat that is currently thrown away by industry."[52]
The United States Department of Energy has an aggressive goal of
having CHP constitute 20% of generation capacity by the year
2030. Eight Clean Energy Application Centers[53] have been
established across the nation whose mission is to develop the
required technology application knowledge and educational
infrastructure necessary to lead "clean energy" (combined heat and
power, waste heat recovery and district energy) technologies as
viable energy options and reduce any perceived risks associated
with their implementation. The focus of the Application Centers is to
provide an outreach and technology deployment program for end
users, policy makers, utilities, and industry stakeholders.
High electric rates in New England and the Middle Atlantic make
these areas of the United States the most beneficial for
cogeneration. [54] [55]

Outside of the United States, energy recycling is more

common. Denmark is probably the most active energy recycler,
obtaining about 55% of its energy from cogeneration and waste
heat recovery.[citation needed] Other large countries, including Germany,
Russia, and India, also obtain a much higher share of their energy
from decentralized sources.[51][52]

Applications in power generation

systems[edit]
Non-renewable[edit]
Any of the following conventional power plants may be converted to
a CCHP system:[56]

Coal

Microturbine

Natural gas

Nuclear power

Oil

Small gas turbine

Renewable[edit]

Solar powerboth solar thermal and photovoltaic

Biomass

Fuel cell