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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.
Natural gas is easy to deliver (the infrastructure already exists), and you can make extremely small power units (this is a perfect example, personally I was looking at a 5kw unit to power my house but power is reliable enough so why bother). The problem however is that most natural gas in Germany comes from Russia, and every time they are feeling tetchy they have this tendency to turn off the gas (literally). Hope it works out, personally I think the higher up front cost of nuclear is more than offset by the stability it provides (typically you have enough fuel on site for quite some time).
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
In 1973 FIAT (the italian car company) put on the market this device (sorry guys, but it is in italian). There are still some cogenerators working around there, but from a commercial point of view it was near a failure. It will be interesting to see what happens to WV generator.
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.
Thats exactly what they want to do. "Lichtblick" is basicly a energy company selling renewable energy. They simply found out that if you want to sell lots of solar energy, you better should have a backup for ..say.. nighttime. Espescially nights that aren't windy...
bickerdyke
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)
That really gives new meaning to word 'botnet'
Imagine a 'swarm of power plants' controlled via DSL
Ah, and imagine a Beowulf cluster of... skip it
Linux forever
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..
Nuclear power IS safe, at least by any reasonable use of the term. Thing is, if you scale up Nuclear power to the same electricity production as coal, even if you include a Chernobyl every year, it'd still kill fewer people than Coal does. The statistics DON'T point to a Chernobyl level event every year - at this point you're looking more at a greater than 50 year interval between them, and every year of safe operation without another disaster extends that.
Even though I am thousands of kilometers away, it is still recommended to not eat mushrooms more than a couple of times a year, and I want a better future for my own children.
Are you sure that recommendation is based on good science? Or is it like the Vaccine scare here in the USA about Thermisol? That has parents not vaccinating their kids even with thermisol free vaccines.
showing that US research spendings on solar energy are still only half of those on nuclear energy despite the fact that you claim that there is essentially no research on nuclear energy! ; figures are from National Council for Science and the Environment.
Given that Nuclear power provides ~20% of our power, sure, there's R&D with it, but most of that's gone to increasing power production capabilities at existing nuke plants, not for building new ones. I'd also note that wind isn't listed - which might put wind/solar over nuclear in research investments(might be why they don't list it), but still under the R&D investments for COAL.
While on this topic, I'll point out that I'm for a rough power production plan of 35% nuclear, 20% solar, 20% wind, 20% hydro, 5% other.
Given that I've considered installed a combined cycle generator in my basement*, I'm not hostile to Lichtblick's plan. I'd power it with propane though, as that's what I have access to. It can be very efficient as well - an electrical power only plant is lucky to reach 50%, most are closer to 30%. The rest is waste heat. If you're using the combined cycle to also utilize the heat that would otherwise be waste, bonus.
*Normally you don't want the generator in the house, but it is perfectly safe if you take the right steps and properly duct the exhaust to OUTSIDE the building, and in my case I'd be ducting the air in as well.
I don't read AC A human right
It's actually pretty neat - you can build a refridgerator that has no moving parts, mearly piping and a heat source. They're known as Absorbtion Chillers. Though after a certain point it is more efficient to have some pumps. Some RV's have these, the heat source is a propane burner. It's more efficient than trying to run a generator(~20% efficient at that size) all the time to keep your food(or medicine) cold when you're not otherwise using electricity. They take a 9V or some other configuration of standard batteries to run the thermostat and fridge light.
They've even done this to provide a building with AC.
The only problem with using solar is that you generally need steam, not mere hot water, for the chillers to work well. this can be done with solar - but you need more complicated solar collectors to concentrate the solar enough to actually boil the water. - rather than a simple panel that you drain water through, you need pipes with curved mirror surfaces(polished metal works well enough though) reflecting more sunlight onto the pipe.
I don't read AC A human right
consider modern reactors have passive saftey masures making a meltdown impossible.
I'll add to this that passive security measures don't mean "nobody needs to take action to turn off the reactor", or even "no computer is needed to shut the reactor down". Passive safety means "this reactor cannot undergo a meltdown because it is physically impossible". Just like you can't walk through walls or damage tank armor by throwing eggs at it, passively safe reactors cannot melt because the laws of physics say so.
nuclear fossil fuel
This GP nugget is funny. What fossilized into uranium? Fire-breathing radioactive dragons?
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
AT&T has "distributed generation", and not just in central offices. Some in-ground network nodes have a small engine fueled from a gas line. This provides backup power if commercial power goes out. In some areas, there's been grumbling about this; somebody in the subdivision gets stuck with the big green box in their yard.
It's mostly a problem in high-density suburban areas. In urban areas, there are underground vaults and commercial basements in which infrastructure equipment can be placed. In low-density suburban areas and rural areas, big metal boxes that make small amounts of noise aren't that bothersome. But in areas where everybody has their little patch of lawn and little else, there are complaints.
I have one of these nodes at the end of my driveway. I get landline phone and DSL through it. It's about 1m x 2m, projecting about 30cm above ground, with a big exhaust vent. I've seen the box open; it looks like a server rack. Normally, it just produces fan noise; the engine is only run for tests and power outages.
Being German, I can tell you that I have yet to meet someone who has AC in his home. Public buildings *sometimes* have it, but AC isn't common here at all.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?