The government may have no grip on the grid and no ears for a CHP feed-in tariff, but our CHP petition has won praise in Parliament (from the building services industry.)
The UK construction minister Ian Wright listened as this website's CHP petition was praised in the Houses of Parliament at a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Building Services.
The
petition, posted by Heating and Ventilating Review on the government's petition website drew public backing from the gathered great and the good of the construction industry but more names are needed to support this campaign urging the government to reconsider funding for CHP by adopting Germany's feed-in tariff model.
The CHP petition calls for UK's adoption of Germany's feed-in tariff model, where mini-CHP generators are given a set tariff when surplus electricity is fed back to the utility companies and a lesser tariff when they use their own electricity.
Combined Heat and Power (CHP) is the simultaneous generation of usable heat and power (usually electricity) in a single process. The CHP unit's engine drives a generator to produce electricity. The engine produces heat as a by-product which is captured from its cooling system and diverted to provide space and water heating for a building.
The electricity can be used on site and any surplus fed back into the national grid.
Faced with rising electricity costs, a business producing its own electricity is a sound idea but the utility firms are not legally obliged to pay a penny for the spare electricity that CHP owners generate and give to the UK's national grid.
With no UK regulation forcing utility firms to pay for electricity going to the national grid, any spare electricity generated by CHP owners is sent to the grid for free, but a CHP owner is charged 12p a therm if it needs to buy it back.
Currently, businesses owning CHP in Germany can charge utilities a feed-in-tariff (when their spare electricity is sent to the national grid) of between 11.6 and 13 Euro-cents for every kW of electricity generated by a CHP unit. These firms are effectively being financially rewarded for generating spare electricity.
From January 2009, businesses in Germany that generate electricity for their own use, will be rewarded by utility firms with 5.11 Euro-cents per kW.
These utility firms claim some or all of the tariff paid from the distribution network operator or the German government.
The UK derives more than 90% of energy from gas-fired power stations, but more than 65% of the energy they produce is wasted. Two thirds of a building's electricity bill covers the cost of heat lost by power stations and via transmission through the grid before it gets to the building. Rather than wasting the heat produced by the electricity generation process, a CHP unit like Baxi SenerTec's Dachs SE, can provide up to 15kW of heat output, while producing 5.5kW of electricity with overall efficiency of 92% .
The government has a target for doubling CHP capacity to 10,000 MW by 2010 to cut carbon emissions. Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks says he has committed to a new system of 'feed-in tariffs', which will be the subject of a consultation later this year. But despite lobbying from the industry and several reports on CHP, no government legislation is in place to make utilities incentivise business to adopt CHP.
Mike Malina is the principal and founder of Energy Solutions Associates and M&E Sustainability’s resident energy management and commissioning expert.
Mike Malina said 'The government has no real grip on the grid when it comes to this issue. We, in the industry know that CHP and a feed-in tariff like the one used in Germany is the answer but the politicians are bumbling along and can't grasp the benefits of such a CHP system'.
He added 'Politicians keep bringing out green and white papers but there's been no legislation.Why all the consultations? We democratically elect a government and they fluff about for years. The government's aim to hit its 2010 target is not going to happen because there's no real incentive for businesses'.
Mike Malina is urging all to support the CHP feed-in tariff campaign by signing our petition
here.