Home of the Future / BlueGEN

lanstrom

Did anyone see the BlueGEN gas generation unit on Home of the Future (Sun 12 February 2012 @ 7PM) ?

4od Link: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/home-of-the-future/4od

I thought I had heard of this sort of thing (electricity production from gas mains) before but was starting to think I had imagined it.

Wonder what sort of cost it would be for a system ?

Shame the main unit looks kinda bulky. If they could get it down to the same size as a regular combi-boiler it would be more attractive.

BlueGen® operates constantly, generating power 24/7 all year-round, regardless of weather.
Its typical output is 1.5 kW of electricity - that's 36 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per day.

So it sounds like I will be burning gas 24/7 then ?!

More info ...
http://www.bluegen.info/

zeupater

lanstrom wrote: »

Did anyone see the BlueGEN gas generation unit on Home of the Future (Sun 12 February 2012 @ 7PM) ?

4od Link: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/home-of-the-future/4od

I thought I had heard of this sort of thing (electricity production from gas mains) before but was starting to think I had imagined it.

Wonder what sort of cost it would be for a system ?

Shame the main unit looks kinda bulky. If they could get it down to the same size as a regular combi-boiler it would be more attractive.

BlueGen® operates constantly, generating power 24/7 all year-round, regardless of weather.
Its typical output is 1.5 kW of electricity - that's 36 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per day.

So it sounds like I will be burning gas 24/7 then ?!

More info ...
http://www.bluegen.info/

Hi

Interesting .....

... if that's the case it's probably 36kWh/day of fuelcell reaction heat too as it's a similar sounding system to the Ceres fuel cell CHP system which does(/will) look like a combi-boiler sized unit ... (http://www.cerespower.com/Technology/PlatformTechnology/)

With 1.5kW being pretty high compared to most household baseloads, unless the system has the ability to modulate output in order to react to demand I'd really consider them as being best employed as a power source for a heat pump ... 1.5kW*3(COP?)=4.5kW+1.5kW(reactive heat) = 6kW of heating for 3kW of gas, before allowance for efficiency losses such as exhaust, so probably realistically somewhere around 5.5kW to 5.7kW of heat .... (substitute HP COP as required )

HTH
Z

lanstrom

Looks like the FiTs rate is 10p kWh with 3.1p kWh export.

It mentions in their faq that it runs continuous but I dont see why it couldnt just be on-demand.

Looks like you can also get a hot water tank "add on" to reclaim 200 litres of hot water per day.

zeupater

lanstrom wrote: »

Looks like the FiTs rate is 10p kWh with 3.1p kWh export.

It mentions in their faq that it runs continuous but I dont see why it couldnt just be on-demand.

Looks like you can also get a hot water tank "add on" to reclaim 200 litres of hot water per day.

Hi

36kWh of process heat would be roughly enough to boil two 200l tanks of mains water from cold in a day ....

No more need for single cup kettles though ...

HTH
Z

Ben84

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Interesting .....

... if that's the case it's probably 36kWh/day of fuelcell reaction heat too as it's a similar sounding system to the Ceres fuel cell CHP system which does(/will) look like a combi-boiler sized unit ... (http://www.cerespower.com/Technology/PlatformTechnology/)

With 1.5kW being pretty high compared to most household baseloads, unless the system has the ability to modulate output in order to react to demand I'd really consider them as being best employed as a power source for a heat pump ... 1.5kW*3(COP?)=4.5kW+1.5kW(reactive heat) = 6kW of heating for 3kW of gas, before allowance for efficiency losses such as exhaust, so probably realistically somewhere around 5.5kW to 5.7kW of heat .... (substitute HP COP as required )

HTH
Z

If you wanted to power a heat pump with gas I suspect it would be more affordable and energy efficient to have a gas powered engine to run the compressor. Any energy lost from the gas burning would be heat so could be captured and used for space heating. Turning gas in to electricity to power a motor is a lot of energy conversions.

Another potential problem with fuel cells is that they take a moment to start generating and depending on how long this is, they may lag uselessly behind demand in many examples. How we use electricity is often in short large bursts, boiling a kettle or an electric fire that repeatedly switches on and off to maintain room temperature. An automatic washing machine as the programmer turns around switches on a motor, pump and heater for many brief periods of time. The national grid works quite nicely as the mass effect of many appliance in many houses smooths everything out to an average demand based on time of day and weather, but in a single house it's pretty random and changes quickly by large amounts.

Possible solutions are either to make the response faster or to include some kind of power storage in the fuel cell boiler, for example a battery or capacitor so the moment something is switched on there's energy for it and so that once something switches off the fuel cell can keep running to store some energy for later, so buffering production and demand. Or perhaps have smart appliances that tell the fuel cell how much energy to produce before they turn on, which might work great for a washing machine or freezer, but how many of us would wait for the kettle to call for power before starting to boil?

Like many people I prefer to be a consumer of energy rather than a producer. It's easier really to let them worry about it all at the power plant and just take it for granted that there's always power available from the sockets. Still, there are new ideas coming and some of it will be seamless in how it works so I hope it will be much more acceptable to the majority eventually, as it seems there are reasonable efficiency benefits to producing electricity at home.

zeupater

Ben84 wrote: »

If you wanted ....

Hi Ben

On current cost effectivity you'd probably be right due to the amortisation of the fuel cell plant cost over the life of the unit, however, apart from the commercialisation of domestic fuel cell units at an affordable price the other technologies which fuel cells would be suitable to power already exist therefore the only effective roadblock is price.

What I was attempting to convey in the previous post was that a huge amount of by-product heat is generated in the reaction, far more than would be necessary within a domestic environment, especially so if the unit has no modulation. It must be appreciated that if there is no demand for the heat, then it's effectively waste, therefore of the 36kWh of heat produced in the summer, if there is no modulation (which I really doubt) most households would simply need to dump in excess of 75%.

I agree that FC units cannot provide instantaneous reaction to load changes, however, it is possible possible to provide the ability to modulate output to match a short term demand average by the switching of cells within a FC stack or switching within an array of stacks whilst utilising the grid to cope with load changes prior to the FC unit being able to react ..... to see what modulation times of fuel cells are have a look at this demonstration video for the Ceres unit (which is a hybrid fuel cell/standard CH boiler) mentioned earlier .... (http://www.cerespower.com/InvestorRelations/PresentationsandVideos/CHPProductDemonstration/) to

HTH
Z

Ben84

zeupater wrote: »

Hi Ben

On current cost effectivity you'd probably be right due to the amortisation of the fuel cell plant cost over the life of the unit, however, apart from the commercialisation of domestic fuel cell units at an affordable price the other technologies which fuel cells would be suitable to power already exist therefore the only effective roadblock is price.

What I was attempting to convey in the previous post was that a huge amount of by-product heat is generated in the reaction, far more than would be necessary within a domestic environment, especially so if the unit has no modulation. It must be appreciated that if there is no demand for the heat, then it's effectively waste, therefore of the 36kWh of heat produced in the summer, if there is no modulation (which I really doubt) most households would simply need to dump in excess of 75%.

I agree that FC units cannot provide instantaneous reaction to load changes, however, it is possible possible to provide the ability to modulate output to match a short term demand average by the switching of cells within a FC stack or switching within an array of stacks whilst utilising the grid to cope with load changes prior to the FC unit being able to react ..... to see what modulation times of fuel cells are have a look at this demonstration video for the Ceres unit (which is a hybrid fuel cell/standard CH boiler) mentioned earlier .... (http://www.cerespower.com/InvestorRelations/PresentationsandVideos/CHPProductDemonstration/) to

HTH
Z

Hi zeupater,

Very interesting video, the fuel cell boiler shown reacts much faster than I expected. The momentary power drawn from the grid when a load first comes on would not add up to much really with this kind of response time.

It also looks pretty invisible in operation, so I wouldn't be adverse to having one if it resulted in less pollution and lower energy costs.

They did however miss some fairly obvious questions. I wonder what the output of heat to the hot water tank per watt of electricity generated is? I also wonder what happens if the hot water tank is already at the set temperature and cannot accommodate more heat? Also, perhaps most importantly, how does it ensure there is enough hot water at the right temperature at the right time when the heat output to the tank seems to be controlled by how much electricity has been used that day?

zeupater

Ben84 wrote: »

Hi zeupater,

Very interesting video, the fuel cell boiler shown reacts much faster than I expected. The momentary power drawn from the grid when a load first comes on would not add up to much really with this kind of response time.

It also looks pretty invisible in operation, so I wouldn't be adverse to having one if it resulted in less pollution and lower energy costs.

They did however miss some fairly obvious questions. I wonder what the output of heat to the hot water tank per watt of electricity generated is? I also wonder what happens if the hot water tank is already at the set temperature and cannot accommodate more heat? Also, perhaps most importantly, how does it ensure there is enough hot water at the right temperature at the right time when the heat output to the tank seems to be controlled by how much electricity has been used that day?

Hi

I had some interesting discussions with BG on this unit a couple of years ago and they sent some preliminary imformation through but it wasn't very detailed. From memory the system was reckoned to be somewhere around 90% efficient in terms of conversion of fuel to energy, roughly similar to a condensing boiler, and of the 90% energy approx 50% was heat and 50% electricity. The main heating, or water 'top/up' if required, is provided by a conventional condensing boiler housed within the same unit. Regarding the ability to 'dump' excess heat, I can't remember seeing anything specifically regarding that but would assume that the unit would utilise the central heating circuit if 'dumping' was required.

HTH
Z