How DE Can Help Operations | How This Website Can Help

Distributed energy (DE) offers solutions to the energy needs of many institutional and industrial facilities worldwide. On top of the large-scale manufacturing and industrial energy needs, most facilities and campuses have also installed millions of computers, digital copiers, advanced phone systems, and other equipment that requires reliable and clean power.

Much as cell phones have leaped ahead of decades old expensive and low performance telephone technology, DE technologies have advanced rapidly beyond older technologies that produce the majority of electricity in industrialized countries, including central station plants. Economic and reliable DE resources can be an essential component of meeting cost and productivity goals. While DE can be as simple as backup diesel reciprocating engines, the DE Forum focuses on the opportunities for DE systems to generate electricity for such diverse sectors as pharmaceutical manufacturers, universities, offices, and government buildings.

Today, Institutional and Industrial facilities have specific energy needs that are unique to their specific situations. DE encompasses a broad array of technologies, from very simple to highly complex, and offers a host of energy solutions that are flexible, scalable, and can be customized to fit the exacting energy needs of institutional and industrial clients. In many cases, DE provides the ability to integrate all energy usage into highly efficient DE resources, resulting in increased efficiencies and reduced overall energy costs.

How DE Can Help Operations

Institutional or industrial consumers have employees, customers, shareholders, management, and individual investors to keep happy. Energy is an important component of operating costs, and energy rises to the forefront when there is a blackout or when increases in utility bills have direct impacts on budgets. Depending upon the particular situation, DE may help to address these issues. In regions of the world where power is known to be unreliable, DE is the only real option for supplying electricity. For some consumers, the peace of mind that comes with having an on-site source of electricity generation in the event of power blackouts makes DE a valuable commodity.

DE systems can provide the following advantages for Institutional and Industrial users:

• Reduced cost - Industrial and institutional consumers have a number of energy needs, including electricity, heating and cooling, and industrial thermal applications. Properly configured DE systems may be able to satisfy these needs in the most economically feasible way, directly affecting the bottom line.
• Back-up power - In areas where outages from the electric grid are more common, DE systems can provide standby electricity when needed. A backup power source can be automatically activated during intermittent power failures to provide uninterrupted service to consumers. Areas that are vulnerable to wind, thunder or ice storms are areas in which consumers should carefully consider DE as a backup power resource. Institutions like hospitals and large telecommunications or financial companies depend upon backup power as an essential component of business.
• Primary power, off grid - In cases where there is no grid access available, such as in rural areas or in less developed countries, the entire energy needs of a facility will need to come from DE resources. In these situations, DE can allow decisions over facility siting to be based on other factors-such as population, workforce density, or ease of supply lines-instead of whether or not the site is located close to a grid.
• Environmental credits - With a growing international emphasis on reducing greenhouse gasses and other airborne pollutants, many large industries are being pressured to contribute. In some cases, regulations punish highly emitting industries, and in other cases, regulations reward those industries that reduce voluntarily (as in cap and trade scenarios). Since a number of DE resources are low- or zero emissions technologies, they can contribute directly to the reduction of emissions. Many industries are recognizing the potential rewards of market-based solutions in environmental regulatory policies, and are deploying DE resources so that they are able to take advantage of cap and trade policies.

Applications of DE

Depending on the application, DE may deliver multiple benefits. Standby or emergency generation systems are the most common DE applications installed worldwide. These installations are typically driven by the cost to the customer of outages in the context of a real or perceived reliability concern with the local utility. Although the back-up unit may only operate a few hours a year, it is used to power critical devices whose failure would result in property damage, health and safety dangers, or recurring outages that cause substantial inconvenience.

A common industrial and institutional application of DE is Combined Heat and Power (CHP), which produces electricity while utilizing exhaust heat as useful thermal output to heat water or in larger systems to create steam. The hot water or steam may be used either for space heating or space cooling. The net result is a system that can exceed 70% efficiency, often twice the available efficiency of the electric grid. CHP provides substantial savings in energy costs while delivering lower overall emissions compared to traditional solutions. CHP is competitive with grid power, but when ready access to the utility grid is not available, or if access is available but power availability or quality are unreliable, DE systems can be economical with or without heat recovery. Continuous duty systems typically operate 24 hours per day, seven days per week (typically over 5000 hours per year), and serve as the primary power source, sometimes using electricity from the utility grid as a backup source. In some areas, emissions can provide a strong barrier to these applications.

The large electrical usage required by a facility can often lead to high demand charges from the utility. Intermediate or peaking units can be used to reduce these costs, or used to increase reliability. These technologies include renewable units such as solar, wind and hydro, as well as non-renewable units such as engines, fuel cells and microturbines.

Many renewable technologies and fuel cells have very low or zero emissions. With the addition of emission-reducing technologies, microturbines and miniturbines emit very low levels of pollutants. Customers who are environmentally inclined may purchase these DE applications for this reason, even if a slight premium is paid for green power compared with grid based power purchases.

How This Website Can Help

This website has been designed to be a one-stop resource for all of the different facets of DE technologies. This section is designed for Institutional and Industrial consumers. If you are interested in DE applications for small or medium-sized business needs, click here. If you are interested in DE from a residential perspective, click here. This site will enable you to:

1. Become familiar with basic terms used to describe DE systems, discover the different kinds of DE technologies, and learn about their pros and cons through the DE Overview.
2. Learn specific details about various types of DE Technologies.
3. Understand the Environmental Impacts of the different types of DE technologies.
4. Gain an overview of the Regulatory and Policy Issues that impact the use of DE technologies.
5. Identify the basic Economic drivers to see if DE makes sense for particular applications now or in the future.
6. Use the DE Forum's unique DE Calculator to identify the best solutions for specific needs.
7. Determine the definition of a term you are unfamiliar with using the glossary located at the Reference Desk.
8. Seek specific answers to your questions through the Discussion Forum, which allows you to present new questions or view answers to previous questions.
9. If you still have questions, please click Contact Us to reach the DE Forum staff.