was a Cogeneration Plant!
Cogeneration and trigeneration systems are
becoming increasingly attractive options for businesses and consumers alike
because of the cost, emissions, reliability, and power quality advantages that
these systems can provide. While
there have been significant improvements in the technologies that are making
them more attractive to potential users, the benefits of cogeneration are not new.
Few people realize that the very first commercial
power plant in the United States ó Thomas Edisonís Pearl Street Station,
which was built in lower Manhattan in 1882 ó was not only the first power
plant in the United States it was also the first cogeneration plant as it made
and distributed both electricity and thermal energy.
Clearly, cogeneration is a proven technology with a long track record of
Why is it important for us to expand the use of
cogeneration in our economy and around the world?
Two-thirds of the fuel used to make electricity
today in the United States is wasted. While there have been impressive energy
efficiency gains in other sectors of the economy since the oil price shocks of
the 1970s, the average efficiency of power generation in the United States has
stagnated at around 33 percent since 1960. The thermal losses in power plants
total approximately 23 quadrillion BTUs of energy, representing one-quarter of
total energy consumption in the United States, enough energy to fuel the
nationís entire transportation fleet, Japanís entire economy, or the annual
energy production of Saudi Arabia. This
energy waste means higher than needed emissions of pollutants like sulfur
dioxides, oxides of nitrogen, particulates, volatile organic compounds, and
It is important to acknowledge that increasing the
use of cogeneration systems is - and has been, for over one hundred years - one of the best
technologies available for
reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conserving fuel.