I recently received a recommendation to check out the Freewatt co-generation system to provide heat and electric for a 3000 sf custom home I will be starting this spring outside of Philadelphia. Curious whether anyone has had any experience or installed one of these systems. They are able to provide either hot air and hydronic heat. http://www.climate-energy.com/ Thanks, John

That looks very cool. I wonder how it handles multiple zones of hydronic heating? Or is multiple zones even necessary since it's not being inefficient to utilize the generated heat as long as the second stage boiler doesn't kick in during normal operation to maintain temperature.

Mark

I've been looking at cogeneration of various types and determined I don't understand something.  I can understand the use for a remote off grid situation or possibly a backup heating system but for on grid I don't see the advantage.  I'm talking for residential use only not industrial.

From the freewatt site "engine/generator provides an overall heat and power efficiency of 83-90%" this is representative of all of the cogeneration products.  Why not just get a high efficiency 90+% heater and call it quits.  You won't need to add any inverters, chargers and the units themselves are very pricy.  Polar Power heat/cool with 6kw generator is $15,000, Marathon ecopower is around $23,000.   I haven’t priced a high efficiency heater but I’m sure they are less than $7,000.

Now if I could attach a stirling engine to a outdoor wood furnace then I’d consider getting one.

I see the great advantages for boats, remote cabins, trucks but not for homes.  So what am I not considering?

 

Maybe your not considering net-metering? Here in MA (where freewatt seems to be starting out here in the states), net-metering is state law - the power company has to accommodate you. Also, in the northern climates, you spend an awful lot of money heating your house (I spent about $2K last year, all told - and fuel oil was a full dollar per gallon cheaper than it is now)- if you could make your energy as a by product of that heat your making anyway, and sell any excess back to the electric utility, you're getting more bang for your heating dollar during the 6 months out of the year you are heating your home. The electric bill reduction I've been told to expect is about $800 per year.

I've done preliminary pricing on a high-efficiency boiler system - $10K. The over-the-phone estimate I got from freewatt was $22K. This is for converting a hot water baseboard system run on an oil boiler to one run on liquid propane (as we don't have gas service in my town). A good rule of thumb is that the freewatt system runs about twice the cost of the high efficient boiler system. The guy is going to come out in the next couple of weeks (we're trying to coordinate schedules) - so we'll see what he says.

In addition, we don't have a back up generator. We'd like to get one (its on the list) but we have other things to do first- having this included with the heating system and having it be seamless with our "regular" system would be nice. One less thing to think about. And then we wouldn't have to figure out where to PUT said generator, or listen to the noise.

The freewatt is about as loud as a new fridge. I have heard it, it's very quiet. Very, very quiet.

One thing I'm not sure about is LP - LP will keep going up as crude oil keeps going up. I'm a little afraid of that. We had considered geothermal, but that seems like a retro-fit nightmare.

Kai28,

I'm not qualified to make a suggestion, but I have a question:  Your retrofit statement indicates that you're in an older house.  Have you considered what you could do to seal and insulate it for the $12K that the freewatt would cost over a high efficiency boiler?  $12K/$800 gives a crude break even of 15 years; can you make more basic improvements that would give a quicker pay back?

Larry

Thanks all for the feedback and opinions. After many discussions with Climate Energy I have decide not to go with FreeWatt system not because I do not think it is a good choice but more because of availability. They currently do not have a dealer/installer network in place in my part of PA. and are hesitant to install a system until that is in place. Also the co-generation part of system will not be available until the fall so I would need to install the HVAC portion and add Honda generator later. May consider for my next house so for now I am going to go with Lifebreath Clean Air Furnace for heating, airconditioning and HRV along with Warmup electric radiant in all areas with ceramic time. Thanks again, John

Hi everyone...I am John from Mexico..I have seen your forum...Nice information provided here which is very useful to everyone....I will be starting this spring outside of Philadelphia. Curious whether anyone has had any experience or installed one of these systems.....thanks for posting...Let me know more about this.....
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simmons
Homes for sale in Jacksonville, FL

Sorry this is so ancient but I haven't seen much in terms of cogeneration threads lately.

Does anyone know how much NG or LP the Honda microCHP burns? I'm trying to quantify what "1.2kw and 12k btus/hour" really means.


Does anyone know what this thing is exactly--is it a piston engine with an inverter generator?

Good flow of information.

Posted By patonbike on 17 Feb 2015 07:18 PM
Sorry this is so ancient but I haven't seen much in terms of cogeneration threads lately.

Does anyone know how much NG or LP the Honda microCHP burns? I'm trying to quantify what "1.2kw and 12k btus/hour" really means.


Does anyone know what this thing is exactly--is it a piston engine with an inverter generator?

The Honda micro CHPs are (SFAIK) no longer available in the US, but my biz-partner has a Freewatt (Honda cogen + Dunkirk boiler + indirect HW heater sold as a system) heating his house.  The Honda is a one-cylinder Rankine cycle internal combustion engine married to an generator, much like Honda's gasoline fueled generators, but fueled by natural gas or propane. That version does not modulate with either thermal or electrical load, has a fairly basic grid-tie inverter, and without some additional electronic hardware it needs the grid to be up to run at all.  His is net-metered at the full residential retail rate.

The Honda basically runs whenever there is a hot water or space heating load, but at only 12,000BTU/hr out it's not a lot of load. When the loads exceed the 12K the boiler kicks on.  As a space heater the Honda has only ~65-70% thermal efficiency, to about 20-25% efficiency as a generator, but a net efficiency of about 90% efficiency. (1.2kw of electrical output= ~4100 BTU/hr of electrical power, in addition to that 12,000 BTU/hr of thermal output.)   It slurps fuel at about 17,000-18,000 BTU/hr, or about 4 therms/day (or 4.5 gallons/day  of propane) when running a 100% duty cycle.  Net metered it runs a modest surplus in winter some days, but rarely for a month (due to the high census at his house.) 

The Honda is the box on the right:



In Japan there is a huge fleet of standalone ~1kw natural gas & propane Hondas, some mounted to the wall of the house with a lawn-mower style recoil rope starter, which became a hot item after electricity became less reliable in some locations after they shut down the nuke baseload fleet in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.