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		Heat Generation, Recovery and Use

		Power Generation and Use

	Polygeneration

		Combined Heat and Power

		Industrial Combined Heat and Power

Polygeneration

Also indexed as: Trigeneration

Cogen Europe The European Association for the Promotion of Cogeneration BELGIUM

Further information:

Cogeneration is the most efficient way of producing electricity and heat simultaneously. By using both the electricity and heat produced together, less energy is wasted in production. Cogeneration - or combined heat and power (CHP) - systems can also be installed close to users, reducing power transmission losses. This makes them even more efficient, and with energy savings, CHP helps recude both greenhouse gas emissions and fuel costs.

In contrast, traditional electricity production creates significant unusable heat as an unavoidable by-product released into the environment. With cogeneration, this is no longer wasted by used to provide heating locally, for example to greenhouses, shopping centres or district heating systems.

Cogeneration may be applied at a wide range of scales from one kilowatt in houses to hundreds of megawatts in district heating and industrial schemes. Many types of fuel, such as coal, natural gas and renewable energy sources, may be used so cogeneration is flexible.

In some cases over 90%, and often over 80%, of the energy source is converted to a usable output with CHP. In contrast, even the most modern separate production systems for electricity have an overall efficiency of only 50-60%, and more commonly efficiency is as low as 30-40% since heat produced is not used.

Whilst originally cogeneration meant simultaneous production of electricity and heat, nowadays other outputs such as mechanical energy instead of electricity, or cooling instead of heating are quite common. Sometimes three or more simultaneous outputs are delivered, in which case this is described as trigeneration or polygeneration.

Case Studies & Reports

Programmes and Projects

EINSTEIN - Expert system for an Intelligent Supply of Thermal Energy in Industry

ManagEnergy - Supporting Local and Regional Energy Actors

D-PLOY - Deploying large-scale polygeneration in industry

Case Studies

Good Practice: Trigeneration for heating and cooling and electricity in the building, Beijing, China

Good Practice: ClimaEspaço - Tri-generation system, Portugal

Good Practice: Cogeneration System, Portugal

Good Practice: Public-private Partnership Leading to a New CHP Plant Utilising Fibre Sludge and Biomass, Sweden

Technology & Service Providers

AUSTRIA