Cogeneration An Emerging trend in India for Energy Crisis

The increasing price of fossil fuels, the increasing need for the power supply reliability and security and the increasing demand for energy-efficient technologies are tending to favor the application of small power generation solutions. An excellent approach to these solutions is to install combined heat and power systems that can be configured to operate under normal conditions to supply local power needs but with grid back up. Cogeneration is also called 'total energy' or 'combined heat and power'. It is the use of a single fuel such as gas to simultaneously produce useful heat and electricity from the same source. While cogeneration matches other power generation options in terms of the investment costs, it provides an indigenous source of the electrical energy for the nation, saves on foreign exchange, is a tool for the employment and wealth creation and agent for abatement of environmental degradation. A significant potential exists for generating electricity from various products such as bagasse, a waste product of the cane milling process, agricultural, animal, municipal solid waste etc. Several studies in India and other parts of the world, point to the sugar industry as a prime candidate for supplying low cost, non-conventional power via cogeneration. The different systems have been designed for electricity generation from all types of wastes. The major power outages in North America and Europe have resulted in focus on developing energy technologies like domestic scale micro CHP (combined heat and power) to reduce the reliance of the consumers on large generators and the grid. This paper focuses on coal-based cogeneration. A case study of 24 MW coal based cogeneration plant is discussed in details. A future scope on bagasse-based cogeneration is also been discussed.