Efficiency as a driver
In order to counteract climate change, we need to rethink the way we generate energy. All experts agree on this. For us, this thought process began around 40 years ago. With the first combined heat and power plant.
In 1982, the Ringallee indoor swimming pool was due for modernisation of the boiler that provided hot bath and shower water. A resourceful engineer came up with the idea of no longer relying on conventional burner technology, but instead producing the necessary heat energy with a combined heat and power unit (CHP). His superiors followed his logical reasoning. This was the starting signal for a success story with no end in sight.
Why combined heat and power generation?
A conventional power plant based on fossil fuels only utilises just over a third of the primary energy sources used - i.e. coal or natural gas. CHP plants, on the other hand, offer overall efficiencies of 95 per cent and more. An interesting detail: when a combustion engine is normally used - in a vehicle, for example - the heat that is inevitably generated is usually undesirable. It is more or less expensively dissipated into the environment via a radiator - in other words, it is wasted.
In a CHP unit, everything is different and the heat is not a waste product. On the contrary. The amount of waste therefore becomes the decisive factor. And the cooling water becomes the transport medium through which the heat ultimately reaches the many customers via an extensive and optimally insulated pipe network.
Take an apple, ...
... take a bite and throw the rest away. This is how you can imagine today's technology in large power plants. Around two thirds of the energy used remains unutilised.
Applied to combined heat and power generation as we operate it, only a small part of the apple remains. In fact, such plants utilise the fuel used almost completely.
Decentralised generation
Together, all of our CHP plants generate around 188 million kilowatt hours of electricity and 355 million kilowatt hours of heat every year. Examples of CHP plants include the combined heat and power plant in the US depot, the combined heat and power plant in the Europaviertel district, the combined heat and power plants in the Ringallee indoor swimming pool and the Westbad swimming pool, combined heat and power plants in Schlachthofstrasse, Lahnstrasse and the East substation.
