Combined Heat and Power Plants with Thermal Storage

Abstract

Increasing the energy efficiency of our systems helps us to meet our energy related challenges affordable. Combined heat and power plants serves as a strong example of how energy efficient technologies can help us drive business competitiveness and economic growth and jobs, and also helps us in protecting our environment from the harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Combined heat and power (CHP) plants or cogeneration, are unique among electricity producing methods and technologies because they generate electricity and thermal energy in a single integrated system. CHP unlike central station generation, is located at or near the consumers location, thus transmission losses and transportation costs are avoided. It utilizes the heat generated by the electric power equipment to satisfy heating/cooling applications of a building or industrial process, which would normally be lost during power generation process. Cogeneration is highly efficient form of energy generation and it can achieve greater energy savings compared to separately generating power, heating and cooling. CHP adds additional flexibility and reliability to the system upon integration with potentially variable renewable energy systems like solar and wind power. Together, the CHP systems results in additional energy savings and carbon footprint reductions. Though CHP is currently underutilized. in industries, the market activity is growing, recognizing its benefits and declining natural gas rates. CHP produces both heat and power simultaneously, but the demand for heat and power fluctuates during the day: Demand for power is typically high during daylight hours; whereas demand for heat is high at night. If the demand for power is met exactly, there may be