Member Article

ENER-G invests in low carbon CHP innovation

Salford-based green energy technology group ENER-G has invested one million pounds in a new remote monitoring and control system for its energy saving combined heat and power (CHP) systems.

The new technology, called E-Power, is a two-in-one system that combines the CHP controls with an energy management system. It improves performance of both the CHP system and wider energy plant within a building - providing cost and carbon savings for customers.

“There are too many poor examples of CHP being installed as a ‘fit and forget’ technology, without proper integration with the master building energy management system”, said Chris Marsland, ENER-G Technical Director, who led the in house R&D team. “E-Power doesn’t just provide an isolated view of CHP performance, it facilitates precise control and measurement of energy production and use across the entire site. This will lead to better visibility of energy use, maintenance requirements and performance targeting.”

In 1984 ENER-G collaborated with the University of Manchester to pioneer the first modern CHP remote monitoring and control system. This made low carbon CHP technology viable on a global industrial scale. The R&D team was able to build on this experience and knowledge to develop the new E-Power system.

CHP is a highly efficient form of local on-site energy generation, where both the electricity and heat are captured and used - making it is almost twice as efficient as conventional power generation, where the valuable heat is wasted. E-Power is built into ENER-G’s CHP units and monitors and controls more than 200 parameters on each CHP unit. The system alerts ENER-G’s national service centre, in Salford, to any anomalies or operational issues, enabling them to run diagnostics, rectify problems remotely, or schedule an engineer visit, if necessary.

Customers can gain instant insights into their CHP performance via a touch screen mounted onto the unit. This supplies data that can be accessed in graphical form and at various levels of detail.

The E-Vision web portal provides total visibility of the entire energy plant, including the CHP system. It supplies live operational, monitoring and control data, as well as historical information via a cloud-based system. As such, data is accessible 24/7 via smartphones, tablets or PCs.

ENER-G is Europe’s leading provider of small scale CHP systems with sister companies in Holland, Poland, Romania, Hungary, USA and Italy.

Further information: www.energ.co.uk/chp

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by ENER-G Combined Power Ltd .