Oct 20 2008
With electrical consumption in the U.S. up 54% in the past twenty years, rising fuel costs, and growing concerns about the environment, who wouldn’t want to make better use of one’s energy while saving money and reducing one’s CO2 emissions?
“Imagine if there was a device that allows consumers and small businesses to generate hot water and electricity in one’s home or office from low cost natural gas, reduce one’s carbon footprint, and sell the excess energy to the national grid,” says Brian Longpré CEO and Managing Director of Disenco Energy plc. “That product exists.”
Established in 2003 and based in the United Kingdom, Disenco Energy is a home energy green power source alternative company focused on commercializing a low-cost, highly efficient, green-alternative to heat and water production. Disenco’s HomePowerPlant (HPP) appliance, enables homeowners and small businesses to dramatically reduce their annual energy bills by approximately 35% each year, while shrinking their household annual C02 emissions by up to 66%. Incredibly, Disenco’s innovative, wholly unique flagship product is based on the traditional Stirling engine, a closed-cycle regenerative heat engine technology invented in the 1820s.
A micro combined heat and power appliance (m-CHP), the Disenco HPP gives consumers the chance to produce all their heating and hot water needs from a single source, with surplus energy that is produced automatically sold back to their respective city’s power grid. In other words, this simple replacement for domestic boilers or furnaces acts as a small power—and revenue!—generator for the home. And proposed legislation relating to carbon credit incentives only promises to make the device even more attractive.
How does the Disenco HPP, expected to enter commercialization in mid-2009, stack up against other alternative energy sources, such as solar panels? In most every comparison, Disenco outshines the competition. Outfitting one’s home with solar panels costs between six to eight times more expensive than the investment in a single Disenco unit; solar panels promise just 30-40% efficiency compared with 92% for the Disenco device, translating into a return-on-investment of forty years vs. just three. And, more important, Disenco produces both electricity and hot water.