Distributed Cogeneration of Power and Heat within an Energy Management Strategy for Mitigating Fossil Fuel Consumption

Abstract

SummaryDistributed energy sources, such as self-power generation, steam boilers, and combined heat and power production (CHP), are operated to manage the supply of energy by optimizing the costs of meeting the demand for electricity and heat. This article was written in conjunction with reports by the United Nations Environment Program's International Resource Panel that quantifies and compares the environmental and natural resource impacts and benefits of using demand-side efficient technologies for greenhouse gas mitigation scenarios from now until 2050. In this article, we examine the potential of using distributed energy sources in future energy systems. First, we reviewed the existing research into several energy technologies, especially into cogeneration systems for CHP, using a bibliometric analysis. The current energy supply/demand in the demand-side sectors in Japan is also reviewed using available statistical data, and an investigation into the energy requirements of industrial manufacturers was performed. After systematizing the results of our review on progress in current research, a scenario analysis was conducted on the potential of distributed energy sources to clarify the contribution of the various technology options. A mismatch between the quality of energy produced, especially heat, or any benefits arising from scale from other energy technologies, can decrease the incentive to implement distributed energy technologies. As a requirement of a regional energy system design and management, distributed energy sources should be considered so that the appropriate technology options can be adopted for the desired energy supply in the demand-side sector. The possibility exists to replace conventional single-generation technologies, such as boilers or power generators, with multigeneration technologies. A change in the grid power mix is one of the most sensitive parameters affecting the performance of cogeneration technologies.

Industrial Symbiosis Centered on a Regional Cogeneration Power Plant Utilizing Available Local Resources: A Case Study of Tanegashima

“…CHP technologies have specific heat and power ratios based on the type of technology and its scale (Kikuchi et al. , ). The demand‐side ratio may change if the sectors or subsectors are mixed and share CHP plants as distributed energy sources.…”

“…For example, cooperation among residential, commercial, and industrial sectors can change the heat/power ratio because of their different profiles of energy demand (Kikuchi et al. , ). Combining the sectors as not just “industrial” symbiosis, but also as symbiosis in all Tanegashima, the local renewable resources can be highly utilized to supply local energy requirements with less use of fossil resources from outside the region.…”

“…Power generation efficiency based on thermal‐energy conversion plants has a scale dependency: For internal combustion‐type generation systems, a larger scale is generally more efficient regarding resource use and economic aspects (Kikuchi et al. ). For smaller plants, which have lower power‐generating efficiency and a higher proportion of outputted heat, exhaust heat recovery can be more important than the production of electricity because of the temporal and spatial gaps in supply and demand (METI ).…”

Simulation-Based Approaches for Design of Smart Energy System: A Review Applying Bibliometric Analysis

“…In this paper, the academic landscape system (Kajikawa et al, 2007;Innovation Policy Research Center, 2016) was adopted as a method of characterizing research in smart energy. This method has been applied previously to the characterization of sustainability (Kajikawa, 2008), its assessment methods (Kikuchi, 2014), energy security (Kiriyama and Kajikawa, 2014), and distributed energy sources (Kikuchi et al, 2016a). 7,468 papers were retrieved from a Web-based literature database, "Web of Science" (Thomson Reuters, 2016), which included "smart energy, " "smart community, " "smart grid, " "district heating, " "computable general equilibrium (CGE), " "MARKAL, " or "energy system simulation" in the abstract, title, or keywords, and clusters were created based on these citation networks.…”

“…In top-down modeling, on the other hand, the detail of technology options might not be considered explicitly in the parameters. In other words, technology models are obtained from microscopic modeling, which can become units of energy systems, e.g., plant-wide models (e.g., Taufiq et al, 2015;Kikuchi et al, 2016a). Macroscopic modeling regards the materials and cash balances of whole systems as constraints and allocates the environmental impacts to activities in the systems, e.g., nationwide models Koyama et al, 2014).…”