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Lichtblick and Volkswagen To Build 'Swarm' Power Plants
Dr. Hok writes "As more and more renewable energy enters the grid, it gets increasingly difficult to match supply and demand 24/7. The answer of German power company Lichtblick and Volkswagen is a swarm of 100,000 flexible base-load generators. These fridge-sized CHP (Combined Heat and Power) generators that will be installed in people's basements in Hamburg starting early next year will feed electricity into the grid and the waste heat into their home's water/heating. The "ZuhauseKraftwerk" (HomePowerPlant) features a vanilla VW Golf natural-gas engine that generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. The units are remotely controlled via a mobile network or DSL; they can ramp up in a minute if needed. A water tank ensures that heat is continuously available, while electricity is produced on demand. The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say. And your old oil heating needed replacement anyway."
"The swarm will replace two nuclear plants, they say"
So when we're all supposed to be scared to death of EVIL GLOBAL WARMING, the 'green' Germans want to replace two nuclear plants that emit no CO2 with... car engines... running on natural gas which will probably have to be purchased from the Commies?
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
"generates 20kW electrical and 34 kW heat with an efficiency of 92%. "
since when is heat generation anything but 100% efficient. Now delivery to where you want it perhaps not. ANd it might go up the stack. but citing a 92% efficiency does not tell me much about the electrical generation efficiency.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Fearing the EV revolution behind the door, the motor engineers are finding ways to stay relevant, but the idea of a Volkswagen gasoline engine running in every home is questionable, fossil fuels are not something people want to stay here forever (nor in their homes).
They sure have a great marketing team at Lichtblick and Volkswagen: so much rah-rah to describe a generator made out of recycled WV engines, that's pure genius.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
personally I think the higher up front cost of nuclear is more than offset by the stability it provides
Not sure about that. Uranium is a finite resource too, much more finite than fossil fuels in fact. If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract. See this page.
So in short, yes you're right, nuclear is great *for you* (and inhabitants of a few other rich politically stable countries), provided (1) it stays fairly unpopular and (2) other countries don't have access to the technology, so that *you* keep enjoying it for a long time.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Uranium is a finite resource too, much more finite than fossil fuels in fact. If the world suddenly switched massively to nuclear power, there would be about a decade worth of uranium to extract. See this page
Not quite. That's assuming a "once-through" fuel cycle, and ignoring things like the newer generations of breeder reactors that burn waste from other reactors. Depending on a number of factors, estimates range between 80 and five BILLION year.
I quite like Bernard Cohen's take on things, cited in that same article, that effectively suggests that we can keep getting uranium from seawater at least as long as the time we have until the sun burns out. I don't quite know how realistic it is, but it's certainly interesting and worthy of further examination.
You failed to consider that the target applicants are already using gas for heating purposes anyway. Now the heat production of the engine will be exactly matched to this need (same as before). All extra gas consumption is fully transformed into electricity (which is possible, even for only 40% raw conversion efficency, as long as the electrical output is much below the heat load).
So, overall, the extra gas consumption (compared to conventional heating) is transformed with 100% efficiency into electricity which is a vast improvement over all competing technologies with similar flexibility.
What I am curious about is why this technology is being deployed on a wide scale now. Cogeneration, where a heat engine's waste heat is used to heat a structure has existed for a long time. There's no reason that natural gas generator/heater couldn't have been installed in your basement in 1970. It would have made your house more efficient then much as it would now. So what has changed over 40 years that make the arguments for/against shift in favor of doing it? The biggest change I can think of is maybe better communications makes it easier for the power company to remotely control the generator. (since it wouldn't do any good to only have a generator in your basement for supplying power to your own house, wouldn't get enough return on investment...that power needs to be sold/credited to other users as well)
You seem to assume that this is something "the germans" as a whole have something to do with, or that it's inherently something that wouldn't happen elsewhere.
In reality, it's just capitalism finding a way to exploit a legislation loophole. There are some hefty subsidies for energy put back into the grid, on the assumption that (A) it would be some green energy like solar or wind, and (B) that it wouldn't happen otherwise, because, (C) there's not much you can put in that way.
Germany is way north, and in at least half of it there are plenty of cloudy days. The same gulf stream influence that makes us not have the climate of, say, Canada or Siberia, well, warm air coming from the direction of the ocean, you do the maths. In, say, Düsseldorf probably a vampire could probably get a day job because there aren't many days with direct sunlight ;)
So solar power isn't a very efficient way to generate energy. Wind is a bit better, but still takes a long time to pay for itself otherwise. So someone figured they'd subsidize people who nevertheless buy a turbine or solar pannels, to have _some_ green energy, even if expensive green energy. Debatable, but Idon't think it's downright stupid or perplexing by any reckoning.
It was not particularly designed for people running diesel or gas generators in that basement, because, well, there weren't any significant numbers of those.
So now two companies figured out they can use a loophole to sell more of their own crap.
Whop-de-do. If you think no American company would do the same abusing a loophole, you haven't been paying attention much. There have been even more stupid attempts, all the way to trying to sell a SMG without the trigger (it would start firing automatically when you chambered a round, and only stop when the magazine was empty) because some PHB thought it wouldn't qualify as an automatic weapon that way. Apparently the BATF thought it still did, though.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
First, this is a Japanese idea and we covered it here already. Second, this is a waste. They are trying to combine heating and power to increase overall efficiency. Cool. Except that Germany does not have much in way of natural gas so imports it. Mostly from Russia who has already shown that they will use it as a weapon. Instead, they should be pushing the use of geo-thermal heat pumps. Or if in town, then do a steam exchange (Germany has high enough density in most of their towns to make it worthwhile). Once they move to a heat pump, their hvac can be used for AC as well and has much higher efficiency. From that point, they can focus on a variety of power generation; Wind, Solar PV/Thermal, Geo-thermal; Nukes; even natural gas backing up solar thermal or geo-thermal (increased efficiency during day to generate more power).
Once they add these expensive units, ppl will NOT want to change until the price of their natural gas goes up. That is the mistake that America has. We typically install Natural Gas/AC which together is about 6-10K. Nobody wants to put out 10K again.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I use water cooling on my PC because air cooling is too noisy. So, installing a power generator in my basement... I'm not sure that's a great idea..