Roll over photos for details of energy recycling projects.
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The incremental cost a utility would have incurred to produce power if a cogeneration plant had not produced it instead. Federal laws say energy recyclers must be allowed to sell excess power to the grid at the avoided cost. This rule is supposed to enable them to obtain a fair price for the energy, but in reality, the avoided cost fails to account for many components of the true cost of power — and even then, the state utility commissions that calculate this figure often lowball the estimates.
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The amount of energy that utilities must keep in reserve in case of a power outage at a particular generating facility. Most cogeneration projects require less backup power than traditional, centralized generation.
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A regulatory system in which the government sets an enforceable pollution standard and allows any company polluting above the standard to buy credits from any company below the standard. This direct market system is significantly different from the proposals now being debated in Congress, in which the government provides frees allowance to select energy companies, including many polluters.
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The amount of power a facility can generate, usually expressed in kilowatts or megawatts. (Also known as generating capacity.)
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A method of producing electricity with large, remote power plants that require high-voltage transmission lines to deliver the power. Because heat can’t travel far before cooling, most central power plants simply vent their excess heat. As a result, they are usually only 33% efficient. Central generation remains the dominant way of producing power in the U.S. Read more on the regulations keeping central generation in place.
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An initiative governments can undertake to ensure consumers have access to clean, cheap power. CESOP’s work by offering long-term contracts to any power plant that produces clean electricity at a price significantly cheaper than building new central generators, thereby encouraging private investment in efficient energy projects. Read more about CESOP.
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The simultaneous production of heat and power. Generating electricity produces immense amounts of byproduct heat; cogeneration recycles that heat into (a) more electricity, and (b) useful heat and steam. This process maximizes energy efficiency. Read more about congeneration.
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Synonymous with cogeneration.
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A method of producing electricity with small, efficient power plants located near or at manufacturing facilities, universities, hospitals, and other large institutions. Because this power is produced locally, the waste heat from decentralized energy plants can be used to heat and cool institutions and nearby buildings. Increasingly, opportunities also exist for putting decentralized energy generators in homes and apartment buildings. Read more on overcoming barriers to local generation.
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Synonymous with decentralized energy and local generation.
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The process of using waste heat from a local power plant — usually one that uses cogeneration — to provide heat for businesses and residents in a given neighborhood.
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Efficiency in a consumer’s use of electricity, often through methods such as compact-fluorescent light bulbs and enhanced building insulation. See also generation efficiency.
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The use of a lower level of energy to accomplish the same task. See also generation efficiency and end-use efficiency.
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Finding a use for energy that would otherwise be wasted. Thomas Edison’s early power plants, for instance, recycled waste heat to warm nearby buildings. Today, most energy recycling opportunities involve cogeneration and waste heat recovery.
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A stack or pipe used to combust waste gas from facilities such as chemical factories, refineries, and natural gas plants. The emissions from such pipes can be environmentally damaging, but energy recyclers can often turn the waste gas into clean power or useful steam.
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The energy available when gases become less pressurized. The energy typically is captured by a backpressure turbine that drives an electric generator to produce fuel-free power with no incremental pollution.
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The electricity generated by any particular facility is usually expressed in hours of power generated (megawatt hours or even gigawatt hours). For example, if a power plant has a 1,000 megawatt capacity and operates for 1,000 hours, then that facility generates 1,000,000 megawatt hours (MWh).
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Efficiency in the production of electricity and heat. Increasing efficiency allows power plants to produce the same amount of power and thermal energy using less fuel. Read more about efficient power production.
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A provision in the Clean Air Act that effectively allows old, dirty power plants to continue polluting at 1960s levels. The Clean Air Act’s crafters assumed the old facilities would wear out over time and cease operations, but the right to continue polluting has become so valuable that old power plants have gained virtual immortality. See also new source review.
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One thousand watts of energy — the average amount that might be required to provide electricity on an ongoing basis to a single household in the U.S.
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Synonymous with decentralized energy and distributed generation.
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One million watts of energy. A large power plant in the U.S. might have the capacity to generate 500 — 1,000 MWs of electricity at any one time.
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Small-scale uses of combined heat & power. Instead of providing energy for a factory, university, or other large institution, micro-CHP might serve a home or small office building.
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A permitting process within the Clean Air Act that is triggered when new power plants seek operating permits or when existing facilities take significant steps to change their operations, improve efficiency and/or reduce emissions. Once that process is triggered, the existing plant is treated as a new source of pollution that must install the “best available control technology” (BACT) to meet modern emission standards. Unless facilities spend millions of dollars on a state-of-the-art overhaul to bring all aspects of their operations up to current standards, their operating permits can be voided. Plant operators will often make no improvements at all rather than risk triggering new source review.
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A proposed metric for power plant emissions that would track the amount of pollution emitted for every unit of energy produced. Efficiency would be rewarded, inefficiency penalized. The U.S.’s current pollution measurements, by contrast, are based on inputs — the amount of pollution per unit of fuel burned. The more fuel a plant burns, the easier it is to meet the government’s standards. As a result, efficiency is actually penalized. Read more on output-based standards.
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The costs electric utilities are allowed to pass directly to consumers. State regulations generally put operating costs in this category. Since costs will be paid by ratepayers no matter how inefficient a power plant is, electric utilities have little incentive to increase their operational efficiency.
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Steam that is processed in some way (hotter, colder, increased or decreased pressure) to make it useful for industrial or consumer purposes.
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A 1978 federal law that said independent power producers must be allowed to generate and sell power. The measure said utilities had to buy electricity from such producers at the avoided cost of power, though it relied upon utilities to self-report what that cost would be. As a result, many utilities and state regulators either made the process too cumbersome or the price too low to adequately compensate independent power producers. This bill allowed CHP to gain a foothold in the U.S. power market, but implementation of PURPA has varied from state to state, and in many states, very little was done.
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Capturing energy that would otherwise be wasted and turning it into clean electricity, steam, and other forms of useful energy.
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The rates that electric utilities charge CHP plants to provide backup electricity in case the power goes out. State regulators typically approve such rates based on the highly improbable assumption that all local generation will fail at precisely the moment of the distribution system’s peak demand, thus requiring the utility to maintain 100 percent spare generating, transmission, and distribution capacity. In fact, the statistical probability that all three generators in a typical cogeneration plant will all fail at the exact system peak is about one in six million. Read more on standby rates.
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The process of sending electricity from power plants to end users through electric wires and other distribution systems. Typically, 7-12% of power generated at centrally located plants in the U.S. is lost along the lines (“line losses”). Infrastructure costs to develop and maintain these systems are built into the price of power. However, distributed generating facilities — smaller plants that generate energy on site — dramatically reduce the need for T&D.
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A natural byproduct of power plants and manufacturing processes that bake, boil, cook, dry, distil, melt, or otherwise heat things. In the U.S., most of this energy (largely heat) is vented into the atmosphere, representing smokestack after smokestack of untapped energy. Most of this energy could be turned into clean power and useful steam through CHP and waste energy recovery.
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The process of capturing waste energy and converting it into clean power and useful steam — slashing energy costs and global warming pollution at the same time. In contrast to CHP, which runs on natural gas or another traditional fuel source, WER simply recycles the waste energy that a manufacturer is already emitting. No additional fossil fuels are used in this process.