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."

Comments

Uh?

[0123456]

"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.

Re:Uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany and Spain allow nice allowances for those that produce the power at home. For example, the price paid for residences in grid-tie solar systems is $.60 per KWH in Germany ("Solar is only economic for installation on rooftops because of the feed-in tariffs for solar electricity of 60 cents per kWh". http://www.edn.com/article/CA6432171.html )

Note that Germany is doing this even though solar is much less efficient there. Germany is located at ~ 51' N latitude . For reference, Great Falls, MT is at ~ 47' N Latitude.

If the US tariffed-in rates were set at even $.38 per KWH, solar would be a no-brainer investment for majority of homes in the US and coal and natural gas generation would die a natural death with no power infrastructure upgrade needed.

As a side note, the price of natural gas sets the world price for Ammonium nitrate - a product which uses natural gas as a major catalyst to produce. Therefore the price of Natural Gas has a great impact on the cost of food for most of the world. ( http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/icm/2003/4-14-2003/natgasn.html ).

That is to say: the electricity we use that is generated by natural gas, increases the price we pay for food-stuffs here and in the rest of the world.

Re:Uh?

[gmthor]

The point is that nuclear plants can't be shut of in a few minutes (coal plants neither) and waters storing plants are not flexible enough. Because of that many windmills and water dams are shut of even thou they could produce green energy. So what it really means is that this technology will allow real green technology to run when ever it can.
Just a statistics i remember (i can not cite it anymore thou) is that about 40% of green energy is wasted because the electric grid couldn't handle it.

Re:Uh?

[FireFury03]

I live close enough to Chernobyl to know that nuclear power is simply not acceptable. Unless you just love thyroid cancer.

Massively flawed reactor designs being run by complete idiots is simply not acceptable. Modern reactors are extremely safe and (in the West) well regulated. If you're going to ban the modern nuclear industry on public safety grounds, you'd better ban the whole chemical industry too since that deals with chemicals that are way more harmful and is far less well regulated. Replacing all the coal fired power plants with nuclear plants would massively cut pollution (coal plants put up a *lot* of particulate pollution into the atmosphere, much of which is radioactive and/or highly toxic, not to mention the environmental concerns of the toxic and radioactive fly ash which has to be disposed of - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill for why this is bad).

Re:Uh?

[Rei]

There are some serious problems with this home generation concept.

1) When is extra peaking most in demand? In the middle of the day in July, when everyone's AC comes on. How much home heating is generally needed in the middle of the day in July when everyone's AC comes on? Not bloody much. But you're going to have the full heat output of a car engine pumping into your house; there's no way water heating alone will justify that.

2) Instead of spending the capital costs to build a couple really big peakers, they're going be building millions of tiny individual peakers, each with their own pollution controls? I can't imagine that would be even *remotely* cost-competitive. Or as clean.

I just don't buy it.

Re:92% efficiency??

[Anonymous Coward]

Well,

you could use math...

If 20kW+34kW is 92%, then the total input energy is 58.7kW, therefore the electric efficiency is approximately 34%.

However, natural gas boilers for heating and warm water are very common in Germany, so replacing some (and 100000 is "some") of them with units that can also generate electricity is not such a bad idea.

Cheers,
Sirius

Re:92% efficiency??

[gmthor]

Yes it can be that efficient.
You are right about the electric efficiency which is of cause bad. But what happens to the waste energy? All the rest is heat is stored in a big water tank for your home warm water. Only 8% of the energy escapes that system and will leave your chimney.