I am having a meeting with the Danish company EC-Power in a couple of days. They had seen some of my articles in Berlingske Tidende about renewable energy and thought I might be able to help doing some PR for their products. This post is not to promote EC-Power, but I find their products and approach very promising.

EC-Power has developed a gas/oil generator that produces electricity. This is a known technology, but the machine, XRGI, is also used for heating water. This heat is normally wasted. In general, the production of 1 kilowatt of power creates 2 kilowatts of usable heat energy.
From the EC-Power website:
“The extremely high efficiency of EC Power Micro CHP systems is dramatically superseeding ordinary energy technology.
By comparison, traditional electricity production has an efficiency of only 30 - 40%. Thus, the EC Power Combined Heat and Power solution can reduce energy bills by 40 - 60%, or increase efficiency by more than 100% - a considerable improvement. Furthermore, the EC Power solution will reduce future investments in the energy infrastructure. By decentralising energy production, the need for new, regional transmission systems for heating and power will be diminished and transmission losses, a substantial cost factor in any centralised energy supply system, will be greatly reduced or become non-existent.”

The system is in use several places in Denmark and other European markets. One of the great future prospects of the technology is that it very easy can be convertet to operate with fuel cells. EC-Power was bought by Norwegian Statoil some years ago.
Link to video.