Combined heat and Power

There are thousands of manufacturing applications and natural gas compressor stations within the United States, all of which emit a significant amount of exhaust heat on an annual basis. With the addition of heat recovery equipment this exhaust heat can be used for the purpose of generating electricity with no fuel and no emissions.

Tri-State and our member distribution systems have a number of natural gas compressor stations in our service territories. These stations will use gas turbines to compress the natural gas at periodic intervals with exhaust temperatures around 900 degrees F. Heat exchangers recover the heat in the exhaust, which is used to vaporize a fluid to drive a turbine/generator set. Heat recovery generation is considered to have zero or near-zero emissions. Small recovered energy generation projects can generate electricity in smaller amounts from 2 to 6 megawatts (MW) in most cases. A similar process is used for manufacturing and industrial applications. If you have a location that you are interested in looking at further for this technology please contact your local utility. You may also contact Tri-State at RenewablesToolkit@tristategt.org