"Steve Firth" wrote in message
.. .
Mike wrote:

Visited the Homebuilding and Renovation show at NEC and saw for the
first
time a MicroCHP which really looked the dog's doodahs. It was on the
PowerGen stand but of course nobody had any details on how to buy one.

Does anybody know the commercial situation with these ? When will they
be
available and for how much ?

The unit in question is a "Whispergen", but don't get your hopes up.
They were originally designed to provide power, DHW and heating for
yachts and as such they are a tad under-sized for domestic use. The
electrical power output is laughably small and they only makes any kind
of sense if installed in large numbers and used to feed current back
into the grid when supply exceeds demand.

The heat output probably demands use of a thermal store of some sortto
buffer the heat generated in the same way. I guess they may well work
wonderfully as a source of heat for underfloor heating.

If you look up "Whispergen" you will find lots of information about them
on the web. They aren't cheap either, units for boats cost in the region
£2300 to £3500.


Thanks and I will do. Hopefully costs will drop but the key advantage I can
see is we have so many short power-cuts that if the heating keeps itself,
the lights and computer on during these then it's a big gain. However I
will need an LPG one which presumably is some way off.