Stirling CHP

[cognos]

Here is a New Zealand company that apparently provides fully-automated, turn-key CHP Stirling-powered systems that provide grid-tied AC power and hot water for heat, or off-grid DC battery charging power and hot water to your home. They are natural-gas powered.

It's an interesting site with plenty of information, and the products look market-ready and available. At least in NZ and the UK. Apparently not available in North America yet. No idea on pricing!

This is a link to the grid-tied unit.

http://www.whispergen.com/main/achome/

[mobile_bob]

sweet little units,
i looked again at their offgrid offering

800watts electrical output at full load, and 19kbtu's of heat
doing the math it works out to 78.7% efficiency at full load, yet they
report 90%? perhaps at a lower load the efficiency goes up?

very interesting unit concept, but last i heard they are very dear in price
at somewhere over 20 grand and iirc some over 30 grand, but i might be wrong.

thanks for posting this though, it provides us with a target to work towards

bob g

[knighty]

I'm no expert, but I've been told these have been around for 3+ years now... and are really hard to get hold of !
(tho this might be changing now?)


from what I was told, the problem was the people making them didn't want to sell them without the backing of a utility company.... the idea being if they could team up with a utility company they could pump out millions of units very quickly

[elnav]

Whispergen  was marketed  in Europe  by Victron as an adjunct to their  inverters, chargers, and other  off grid and marine products. This was going back to 2001. Due to an unfortunate  manufacturing problem they suffered an excessive  number of warranty problems and the product was pulled temporarily from the  North American  market  only a month before I was to get factory training as a Whispergen technician. We did have one unit running at the Miami show  and it was fully functional inside the building. Silent and clean burning. Nobody  would believe it was working inside  the building.

Marketing is everything. At the time it was being marketed as a silent generator not as CHP heat source  that also produced electricity.  Naturally that did not sell well to the Miami crowd looking to drive their  power hungry air conditioning  while producing waste heat they could not use.
This past year new dealers in the PNW both near Seattle and Vancouver BC have installed Whispergen in boats cruising our northern water where some heating is required at least six months of the year. but yes it is over priced for the market. Not all of that is due to exchange rates.  If I could get just the  stirling engine   It could be welded to the wood burning boilers a friend sells and then we would really have something.