This time I chose cogeneration plants.  I feel that cogeneration plants are a wonderful alternative to coal or nuclear applications.  Natural gas burns much cleaner than coal and helps to use less electricity through the use of steam for heating and cooling.

How It Works

The natural gas is fed to a turbine and burned to power a generator. In this process, heat is given off as well. We can then use that heat to convert water to steam. The steam can be used to heat a building or run absorption chillers.  Absorption chillers are chillers that operate on the same principle that ammonia refrigerators do with propane. They are normally used in places where there is a surplus of heat. Now we can use heat to cool. With more and more people looking into the use of ammonia as a refrigerant, I think that we should revisit cogen plants for places that would benefit from the process. The process, usually, would only benefit large applications such as college campuses, schools, or industrial applications. 

Current Applications

There is currently a cogeneration plant, which happens to be the largest in the United States, in the city of Midland, Michigan. I believe this may have been one of the greatest trade offs or all time. The MCV, or Midland Cogeneration Venture, was undertaken after Consumers Energy failed to build a nuclear power plant to service Dow Chemical and the rest of the city. I am not the biggest fan of the byproducts of nuclear reactors or some of the processes involved. 

The plant that was going to be built was subject to new regulations after the accident at Three Mile Island. The site was built on a poor soil configuration so the buildings were starting to sink. You can see why I think this was one of the best trade-offs of all time. Just imagine a nuclear plant with all the buildings sinking and cracking. I would not have wanted to be around when that accident happened.

Instead we have the MCV, which uses natural gas to more cleanly create energy for almost 10% of the lower peninsula as well as servicing Dow Chemical. I believe this leaves a large opportunity open for other manufacturers in the state of Michigan and other places where natural gas is more readily available to clean up their act. New schools and other large campuses could also take advantage of this source of electricity.

Here is a link to a video describing NYU's new cogen plant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m9SgsTTgiA MIT has also invested 40 million dollars in a new cogeneration plant to be built in the future.