Combined Heat and Power Systems (CHP) - Energy Management

Oakland University Facilities Management and the School of Engineering are actively pursuing Combined Heat and Power (CHP) installations, research and educational opportunities, located at the Rochester, Michigan campus. Please click here for the Energy System Application and Integration Lab (ESAIL) which focuses on micro scale CHP. (coming soon)

CHP systems use on-site electrical power production where the waste heat can be recovered, or recycled, back into the facility to serve heating, hot water, or thermally driven air conditioning loads. CHP is therefore much more efficient than using conventional grid power where centralized power plants reject this waste heat back to mother nature and then transmit the electric power over long distances with resulting losses. The differential in fuel price to the local electrical price determines the economics of CHP installations. Current clean, abundant, and low cost natural gas make CHP the clean energy system of choice for reducing your carbon footprint. Between the gains in efficiency, and switching from coal fired grid power, you a facility could substantially reduce its carbon footprint by merely implementing this proven, reliable on-site power option.

To learn more about CHP, visit the Department of Energy's CHP program , the EPA CHP Partnership, or the Midwest Clean Energy Application Center. Another good information site is hosted by the Energy Solutions Center.

Here are some links in the CHP Application Center activities supported by the DOE.

DOE "CHP" Clean Energy Application Center program

EPA CHP Partnership - has guidebook, emission calculator, & other good info

Below are some CHP activities going on at Oakland University.

OU is investigating a 3 to 6 MW CHP installation of a gas fired combustion turbine in our Central Plant. We currently operate a central High Temperature Hot Water plant serving all of campus. Four large absorption chillers use this hot water to create cooling for about 1/3 of the campus making CHP an ideal technology for Oakland.
OU is installing two 200 kilowatt micro-turbine CHP units into the new Engineering Center presently under construction. This innovative new green building will be open for classes in for Fall 2014. The building will also feature chilled beam cooling with magnetic bearing chillers.
OU's Clean Energy Research Center involved in multiple micro-CHP R&D efforts both with industry (a 1.5kW packaged CHP system) and prototyping of a proprietary dual fuel micro-CHP unit for restaurant applications to dispose of site generated waste vegetable oil. Lastly, the CERC is launching a multi-year student project which converts a used 50kW sterling engine generator to a diesel - natural gas dual fuel CHP unit.
Multiple CHP and solar installations are being installed or proposed. A future vision for a distributed generation micro-grid with integrated CHP can be seen here, or click the image to the right. This is a one minute slide show.	click image