On Friday, 5 May 2017 23:20:13 UTC+1, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 05/05/17 20:14, Max Demian wrote:
On 05/05/2017 19:42, AnthonyL wrote:
I was watching the early development of electricity generation and
houses had their own coal fired generators before power distribution
became widespread.

Now is the time of year my fuel contracts come up for renewal; I can
get gas at less that 3p/kwH but my electricity supplier (soon not to
be) has upped their rate to nearly 14p/kwH which had me wondering
about the economics of using the cheaper gas to generate my
electricity.

ok, a bit t-i-c but it'd be fun having my own steam generator
(modified boiler?), turbine and generator. I recall a viable jet
engine (intended for VTOL some 45yrs ago) that could be picked up by
one person so a turbine needn't be too big.

The reason why gas is cheaper than electricity is that the gas engine is
inherently inefficient. I think commercial ones are up to 50% efficient:

65%.

I don't think you'll get anything like that. An ICE might be 30%
40under noraml conditions

if 'normal' means with all the bells & whistles huge power stations have. Without all that you'll get nowhere near. This is one of the problems with small scale generation.

and a
steam engine more like 10%.

37% or up to 42% with supercritical steam at 400C or so.

NT