Universal Solution? | Green Energy News

April 11, 2004 – Vol.9 No.3

UNIVERSAL SOLUTION?

There’s always resistance to change. There’s always a desire to preserve and protect the status quo. For many - including those in business and industry - it’s always easier, safer, to stay the course than to move in a new direction into the unknown.

For some in the fossil fuel industry, renewable energy technologies are considered disruptive because they have the potential or threat to displace, or eliminate, the status quo. At worst, displacement or elimination would mean a loss of business or possibly being forced out of it.

For those feeling less threatened by renewables there is the possibility of investment in the new technologies. But, in general, businesses only like to invest if it means additional profits in a reasonable period of time. They don’t like to invest just to stay in business.

Unfortunately, since the status quo in energy - fossil fuels - dominates the energy picture - they have the money and political connections - they will do whatever they can to protect their ground, resist disruption and avoid displacement.

But what if a common ground technology were employed? A technology that could be cleaner, greener and more efficient while meeting the stay-the-course mentality of the fossil crowd?

One of those technologies would be Stirling engines.

Stirling engines need a source of heat to operate - any source of heat will do. If that heat is from the combustion of a fuel, any fuel is fine - gasoline, oil, natural gas, coal for example on the fossil side; biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, even methane from the decay of chicken manure and others on the renewable side.

But the sources of heat for Stirling engines don’t have to be from combustion. Concentrated solar energy works, as would geothermal energy, even decaying uranium to keep nuclear buffs happy.

And for those really wanting to meet on common ground there are hybrid possibilities. Methane from landfill dumps or decomposing pig manure could work alongside natural gas, for instance. Solar heat, as well, could be blended into the same device in sunny, peak power demand periods.

From a manufacturing standpoint Stirling engines also meet the protection needs of traditional industries. Stirling engines are made from machined metal parts. They have pistons and crankshafts. Sound familiar to that device under the hood of your car?

They also have a feature which executives in manufacturing like. Fewer parts, up to 50 percent fewer than in internal combustion technology in use today. Executives like reducing parts count. It keeps cost down.

DTE Energy Technologies - the non-regulated subsidiary of DTE Energy and the parent company of electric utility Detroit Edison with its 2.1 million customers - has added a 55-kilowatt Stirling engine generator to its energy | now product line. The ENX 55, a re-badged STM Power Unit from STM Power, will be marketed for distributed generation applications. The company will be comparing the generator against microturbines, conventional engines as well as fuel cells which DTE is also marketing.

In one version of the ENX 55, DTE will be offering the generator as a fuel-fired unit that will operate on a variety of fuels such as biogas from anaerobic digesters associated with waste water treatment plants and agricultural facilities. The company will also offer a waste heat unit that will run on the heat from manufacturing processes. Waste heat from the steel foundry that makes the parts to build the ENX 55 could be recycled into electricity to help power the same facility.

The ENX 55 has an electrical generation efficiency of about 30 percent, according to DTE. The unit can also be deployed in combined heat and power applications for even greater overall energy efficiencies.

Visit DTE Energy at http://www.dteenergy.com/ and STM at http://www.stmpower.com/