Remote Living > Heating
Combined Heat and Power
joestue:
Grid power is about 38% efficient from the thermal source to the consumer, i would agree with that.
You can do better, if you capture 80% of the waste thermal heat, better yet use it to drive chemical processes.
There are plants that have a steam cycle condense into a propane cycle, then that goes through a turbine to condense in the cooling tower. Those plants are reaching as high as 60% efficient.
Distribution losses are around 7%. Basically 1% losses in each transformer, plus 1% losses in each distribution line between them.
Some friends of mine, buy natural gas for a third of the price of their industrial electric price of 6 cents a kwh. This reflects the fact that the utility runs nat gas power plants within 100 miles of them, and is making money selling them the electricity.
ChrisOlson:
--- Quote from: joestue on November 22, 2023, 01:29:57 PM ---Grid power is about 38% efficient from the thermal source to the consumer, i would agree with that.
--- End quote ---
That's been the long accepted baseline in the industry. The national grid system is not quite as thermally efficient as modern diesel engines converting a fuel to mechanical power. One company that has pioneered a special combustion chamber shape and high temperature combustion process to ignite pure E98 ethanol in a diesel engine has achieved close to 80% thermal efficiency in heavy duty on-road, construction and agricultural diesel engines. They have modified a C-15 Cat, an ISX 15 Cummins, then John Deere got in on it and they modified a 9.0L Deere engine to run on E98. One of the problems with using E98 vs petroleum diesel in compression ignition engines is that E98 doesn't ignite reliably. In a diesel engine they can change the combustion chamber shape by changing pistons, then modify the fuel system to handle direct injection of ethanol fuel.
The national grid system is outdated, overloaded, very inefficient and very expensive to fix. For that reason, and despite all the hype, EV's will never replace combustion engines any time soon because they are actually worse from an emissions standpoint, and too expensive to manufacture. Same goes for the highly touted "hydrogen economy" - hydrogen might be the most abundant element in the universe but it's very low on energy content per kg of fuel, and it's not cheap or easy to manufacture it as a fuel.
These guys, on the other hand, are smart - select a fuel that already has billions of gallons of manufacturing capacity, and make diesel engines run on it. This will change how things are done in the future because it doesn't require major changes to infrastructure, is efficient, economical and practical. None of the other things meet those criteria and there's one undeniable fact - if it's not economically feasible it will never be anything more than a pipe dream.
https://www.agfax.com/2022/02/11/ethanol-diesel-engine-passes-road-test-dtn/
Mary B:
--- Quote from: ChrisOlson on November 22, 2023, 02:17:50 PM ---
--- Quote from: joestue on November 22, 2023, 01:29:57 PM ---Grid power is about 38% efficient from the thermal source to the consumer, i would agree with that.
--- End quote ---
That's been the long accepted baseline in the industry. The national grid system is not quite as thermally efficient as modern diesel engines converting a fuel to mechanical power. One company that has pioneered a special combustion chamber shape and high temperature combustion process to ignite pure E98 ethanol in a diesel engine has achieved close to 80% thermal efficiency in heavy duty on-road, construction and agricultural diesel engines. They have modified a C-15 Cat, an ISX 15 Cummins, then John Deere got in on it and they modified a 9.0L Deere engine to run on E98. One of the problems with using E98 vs petroleum diesel in compression ignition engines is that E98 doesn't ignite reliably. In a diesel engine they can change the combustion chamber shape by changing pistons, then modify the fuel system to handle direct injection of ethanol fuel.
The national grid system is outdated, overloaded, very inefficient and very expensive to fix. For that reason, and despite all the hype, EV's will never replace combustion engines any time soon because they are actually worse from an emissions standpoint, and too expensive to manufacture. Same goes for the highly touted "hydrogen economy" - hydrogen might be the most abundant element in the universe but it's very low on energy content per kg of fuel, and it's not cheap or easy to manufacture it as a fuel.
These guys, on the other hand, are smart - select a fuel that already has billions of gallons of manufacturing capacity, and make diesel engines run on it. This will change how things are done in the future because it doesn't require major changes to infrastructure, is efficient, economical and practical. None of the other things meet those criteria and there's one undeniable fact - if it's not economically feasible it will never be anything more than a pipe dream.
https://www.agfax.com/2022/02/11/ethanol-diesel-engine-passes-road-test-dtn/
--- End quote ---
Town I grew up in had its own coal fired power plant that they modded to natural gas, the generated steam went thru the turbine then was piped into the downtown to heat the businesses then returned as cooled water... sure some loss in the pipes but it had to be pretty dang efficient...
JW:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCi7gW6RfnM
This is actually kind of recent. The idea is to use renewable biofuel. Were still working on the steam engine.
MattM:
If you wrap copper coiling around it, can you add heat with excess solar?
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