Trigen: An Efficient Method for Building Utility

Trigen: An Efficient Method for Building Utility

I just learned about this technology/technique, and I thought it quite interesting. Basically, its making use of the  by-products of Building Power/Electricity Generation to generate heat and cooling in a factory pre-built system. The goal of Trigen is also called cogeneration, which is making using of one generation system to drive another generation system. In the past power, heating and cooling was often designed, purchased and implemented independently. Then to do cogenration some engineering was needed to integrate these separate parts together was engineered and integrated through custom work.

The power generation produces much heat as byproduct. This heat can be used to heat the building, or for cooling by using absorption chillers.

With Trigeneration the integration of Cooling, Heating and Power is done by design, resulting in many benefits such as:

– Reduced cost of custom integration, since integration of the functions are done at the factory
– Improved ROI from Greater system efficiency, since the components were designed to work together
– Reduced size of CHP unit because of unified design