And it can't happen soon enough IMHO. All things being equal, and if you need the hot water or process heat, cogeneration will save you ~40% of the original fossil fuel.
As a bonus, lots of neighborhood sized cogenerators, or residential sized individual units makes the whole grid more robust and removes those big juicy centralized power plants as terrorist targets once we all get converted. Once the hardware is paid for, it will also be the same cost or less as centralized power production because distribution requirements are so much smaller.
The big hurdles right now are
- First generation equipment that may not have all the durability and useability issues properly sorted out.
- Finding the capitol to buy all those cogenerators. Even if the payback is good, there's still a lot of up front costs.
- Political issues, namely, the power companies are generally resistant to anything that reduces their revenues or political influence.
I know I like mine!
Good luck and have fun!
troy
