Techno-economic evaluation of commercial cogeneration plants for small and medium size companies in the Italian industrial and service sector

The liberalization of the electricity market and the concern for energy efficiency have resulted in a surge of interest in cogeneration and distributed power generation. In this regard, companies are encouraged to evaluate the opportunity to build their own cogeneration plant. In Italy, the majority of such companies belong to the industrial or service sector; it is small or medium in size and the electric power ranges between 1 ÷ 10 MW. Commercially available gas turbines are the less expensive option for cogeneration. Particular attention has been given to the possibility of combining an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) with gas turbine, to improve the conversion efficiency. Companies have to account for both technical and economical aspects to assess viability of cogeneration. A techno-economic analysis was performed to identify, in the Italian energy market, which users can take advantage of a cogeneration plant aimed to cover at least part of their energy demand. Since electricity and thermal needs change considerably in the same sector, single product categories have been considered in the analysis. Our work shows that in the industrial sector, independent of the product category, cogeneration is a viable option form a techno-economic perspective.

► The best technologies for 1 ÷ 10 MW distributed generation plant are gas turbine and ORC.
► A variety of commercial cogeneration plants is available to meet user needs.
► Cogeneration is a technical and economical advantage for industrial sector companies.