Pretty interesting, Dana1, thanks for putting it up.

Do you happen to have any links to full English versions? GOOGLE translations are leaving me hanging a bit on the technical details.

When electricity hits 0.33 / kWh, couldn't we do this, too?

Assuming you're referring to the LichtBlick website PR descriptions, the only thing they have is:

http://www.lichtblick.de/h/english_information_395.php

The German descriptions are more complete, but still not very technical. VW has more English language descriptions of their part:

http://www.volkswagenag.com/vwag/nb09bis10/content/en/Ambitionen/Klima_und_Energie/Blau-Power.html

Searches on [vw cogeneration] come up with other English language descriptions eg:

http://www.german-info.com/press_shownews.php?pos=Economy&pid=1600

The US company Marathon has a somewhat smaller unit with ~40K of thermal output available in the US, but no big distributor or utility-scale buyer such as the the VW/LichtBlick arrangement. Installed pricing is on the order of $30KUSD at their current rate of production, but if they were cranking out 10,000/annum with a simplified standardized system setup (LichtBlick style) that could probably be cut to ~$20KUSD, maybe less.

http://www.marathonengine.com/cogeneration.html

The only other micro-cogens available in the US is a ~12KBTU/hr Honda, and their sole distributor only sells them bundled with condensing boilers & furnaces- independent designers can't just buy 'em to integrate into their own systems:

http://www.freewatt.com/

The bundled hydronic systems are WAY oversized for a superinsulated house, or even a modestly insulated non-McMansion house such as mine, (an 80-200K boiler + 10K cogen for a min-burn rate is WAY more than most US homes could ever use), but I have backchannel information that they expect to be selling a bundled system with a much-downsized hydronic boiler late this year- hopefully thats more than an insider-generated rumor. http://www.freewatt.com/hydronic.pdf

The smallest of their condensing furnace bundled versions can probably work for many existing homes though: http://www.freewatt.com/warmair.pdf

The Freewatt/Honda system is cost effective if net metered & at current MA natural gas electricity as prices (15-20cent electricity, $1.25-1.75/therm gas). Gas rates could double and there would still be a long-term NPV argument for it, but at current Boston area utility pricing it's a VERY good deal, if you have the thermal load for the ridiculously oversized hydronic boiler. (My biz partner has a ~6000K' leaky creaky 1840s antique of home in Newton, MA heated by a Freewatt Hydronic system. My house is less than half the size, and has ~1/3 the design-condition heat load despite a ~10F lower design temp where I live.)

Installed cost on the hot-air versions (not including ducts) is typically under $15K. The bigger hydronic system under $25K. (My partners' installed cost 4 years ago was about $20K.)

With micro cogens not under utility control running heating systems their peak output tracks perfectly with electricity peaks related to heating systems (heat pumps & air handlers, etc), but it takes a Lichblick approach and larger sizing on both the cogen and the thermal storage to use them for wind/solar power hardening. But even without smart grid control still a worthwhile approach though, since there isn't the additional capitalization costs- it IS the self-regulating peak generator for space heating related loads to the grid, not a backup, and doesn't introduce an intermittent wild-card into the grid control.

A substantial portion of the total grid power in Denmark, Finland, Russia, and the Netherlands is currently being source from gas fired mini & micro cogenerators. Team USA is WAY behind on the approach, with many nay-sayers despite the European existence proofs of how it's done:

http://www.climate.org/publications/Climate%20Alerts/Winter2009/EU.html

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/askarov1/

Cogeneration in the US is about 8-10% of the total, but mostly at larger scale industrial & commercial installations. The micro-stuff could make a HUGE difference going forward though. State of the art combined cycle gas-fired power plants run at sub-60% thermal efficiency, traditional versions are sub-35%. With mini & micro-cogens running space heating or chillers, net thermal efficiencies north of 90% aren't hard to hit.

The economics of various approaches to mini-& micro cogens, wind, etc are spelled out reasonably in this document from 3 years ago that was primarily intended as pushback on the revived interest in nuclear power in the US:

http://www.rmi.org/cms/Download.aspx?id=2585&file=E08-01_NuclearIllusion+(1).pdf&title=The+Nuclear+Illusion

While it's biases are clear, the numbers are well-supported, and not particularly cherry-picked. It's a lot of reading, but if you want the synopsis, look at the charts & figures carefully. Micro-cogeneration is quite competitive on the total lifecycle cost on a per-kwh basis with coal (even without carbon tax) or large scale wind, and a fraction of the per-kwh lifecycle cost of nukes.

PV was of the charts at the time that was written, but panel pricing has crashed in the past 3-4 years with the growing production capacity of decent-efficiency CIGS technology PV in the US, and massive investment in silicon technology PV in China. To make PV cost-competitive without subsidy took ~35 cent/kw retail a handful of years back when Germany was setting subsidies, but it would be sub 25 cents now, and if the cost of the inverters/meters/installation came down by half, at current panel pricing on single-home scales it could compete straight-out in higher-priced electricity markets like CT or MA. (On 200kw+ installations it's cost competitive now.)

You can pick what ever alarmist photos you want, but nuclear kills 1/10 the people that solar does (see above link). Even so, I'm a solar fan - if they can just get the price and storage issues solved. Co gen (preferably turning geo thermal compressors) is OK when one needs the heat - but equipment price and maintenance is an issue.

The price issue with PV is now primarily an "all the rest" situtation- lifecyle cost/kwh the panels themselves are pretty cheap. The storage issue may (eventually, in some locations) be somewhat solved by an electrified auto fleet & smart grid, but longer term storage of PV output is still a pretty tough nut to crack.

Micro-cogens are cost-competitive with other sources NOW, (and will be more so when in higher production), even when maintenance is included. (Curiously, the engine used in the Marathon cogen was originally design as a direct-drive for a heat pump compressor, not a generator, but it get's higher net thermal efficiency as a generator unless the compressor end can run with an average COP of ~4.0 or better.) The Marathon micro cogen can be controlled as a modulating system (but with only a 1:2 turn-down), which can be used to lower the minimum thermal storage size or track electric loads directly. Thermal storage over periods days is quite cheap, and allows micro cogens serve the electrical peak loads asychronously with the peak thermal. The contrast of the capital required for storing the output of PV for a few days at similar efficiency is pretty stark. But if the PV storage costs become bounded, in heating dominated climates there's a pretty good complement to the seasonal outputs of space-heating microcogens and PV. In cooling dominated climates the daily/hourly output of PV falls significantly with cooling loads (PV runs at lower efficiency when hot- even worse when it's both hot and hazy), but a cogen's thermal output applied to chillers tracks both the thermal and electrical (from AC compressor) loads nicely. They're extremely flexible.

Nuclear may kill fewer people but...

...they take forever to build (making it a big financial risk)...

...are remote from loads (increasing the grid infrastructure requirements)...

... require backup power from other sources to cover refueling days/weeks down-time...

..do not modulate well to track grid load (primarily due to limited startup ramp slope- they turn down just fine)...

... and have a lifecycle cost/kwh 3-5x the alternatives.

As base-load generators to extensive & large grids they're OK, but at France's current share they're a serious pain to manage. Without a Spain and Italy to dump off peak power onto (at below the cost of producing that power) France would be in serious trouble with them, and they would be forced to build a huge amount of other, more flexible generation to manage the 24 hours grid loading cycles. When power can't be sold, the output of nukes is dumped, converted to heat rather than turning them down to suffer the power shortfall during the morning peak. (An electrified auto fleet could be used to advantage there as well.) During peak grid loads for air-conditioning nukes have to be throttled back due to their own increased cooling needs at max power during periods when cooling towers are less effective, making them an even worse choice for cooling dominated climates. (France has had to seek EU permission to increase the temperatures of rivers used for cooling to be able to supply sufficient power during heat waves.)

They may be safe enough, but they've gone from "too cheap to meter" to "too expensive to matter" at least for new nukes, in the intermediate term. (Keep the existing fleet going as long as they're still economic.) It's far easier & cheaper (even for the end customer) to regulate into existence a nukes-worth of higher efficiency at the load than to build the nuke to supply the same juice.

, not a generator, but it get's higher net thermal efficiency as a generator unless the compressor end can run with an average COP of ~4.0 or better.)

Not true. Either way, all the heat is used except for what goes out via exhaust. Plus any geo system with a COP > 1 will also bring in heat from outside - so it always wins over straight use of electricity. York's idea in their NG driven compressor was for cooling which makes far less sense.