Impact of Combined Heat and Power (CHP), plant on Small and Medium Size Enterprise (SME), energy supply used as trigeneration

Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants serving Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs), form the back bone of on-site generation capacity, replacing existing on-site thermal and cooling energy plant and substituting, to a large extent, the commercial electricity supply. CHP is one of the primary means for European Union (EU) to achieve its energy policy objective of improving energy efficiency and its environmental policy objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated that doubling the amount of CHP generation capacity will allow the EU to meet half of its CO₂ reduction commitment. The paper is a study of the operational performance of a Combined Heat, Power and Cooling (CHPC) system in a SME with an intention of developing the model for the technical and environmental analysis. The case study is carried out at a large four star hotel located on the outskirts of Cork City in South of Ireland. This hotel has added a cooling system on the existing CHP plant that utilized the electrical and thermal energy generated. The paper discussed findings and results based on one year´s data collection (2008) in order to give an insight on CHPC system impact on energy supply as well as on the emission of greenhouse gases, particularly CO₂.