August 8, 2003—New York Gov. George E. Pataki recently announced $14.5 million to support thirty-six distributed generation and combined heat and power projects throughout the State. The awards will support projects designed to increase clean, efficient and much-needed generation capacity, and to support the development of improved generation technologies. These combined heat and power systems will enable commercial, agricultural, and industrial energy users to generate their own electricity, while using waste heat from the electric generation equipment for productive purposes, such as space or water heating.
Combined heat and power applications provide much greater overall efficiency than centralized power plants deliver by taking advantage of the waste heat. The overall efficiency of a typical combined heat and power system approaches 75 percent, while the overall efficiency of centralized power plants is about 35 percent due to heat losses at centralized plants, and transmission losses in delivering power from the plant to the customer.
The thirty-six projects were selected after a technical evaluation of each proposal to determine the likelihood of success as well as the economic and environmental benefits associated with the proposed projects. Among the projects selected for funding:
- The Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo will install a 200-kilowatt gas-powered combined heat and power fuel cell during renovation of the century year old, Old Lion House.
- New York University will replace a nearly three-decade old combined heat and power system on their campus with the installation of a $45 million state-of-the-art co-generation plant that will reduce on-site energy costs, harmful air pollutants including greenhouse gas emissions, improve reliability, and reduce peak load on the grid.
