Home power plant

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Home power plant (spelling of the provider: home power plant ) was the brand name and an overall concept of a small combined heat and power plant (CHP), which should be part of a virtual power plant through interconnection with many other small combined heat and power plants . The Lichtblick company pursued this idea in cooperation with Volkswagen .

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concept

The home power plant works according to the swarm current concept , in which a virtual large power plant is created by networking many small power plants to form a large one. The individual units are centrally controlled by Lichtblick via cellular network and produce both electricity and heat. The heat is stored and used on site. The electricity, if it is not used locally, goes into the public grid. When the heat storage tank for heating and hot water in a unit is full, the control center will only draw power from this unit when heat has been consumed and can be stored again.

Sales concept

In September 2009 Lichtblick presented a collaboration with Volkswagen. Volkswagen then began to manufacture small combined heat and power units based on a Touran natural gas car engine at the Salzgitter engine plant . The nominal electrical output of the power plants was 20 kW . Around 40,000 kilowatt hours of heat would therefore have to be consumed per year to ensure economic use. The concept was particularly suitable for single-family houses with an area of at least 250 square meters, for apartment buildings as well as for schools, hospitals and hotels.

In Lichtblick's first sales concept, the property owner invested a one-off € 5,000 in converting the heating system. The home power plant was then installed by Lichtblick and remained the property of the company. The customer paid a monthly basic fee of 20 euros and received a cellar rent of 5 euros. He also paid 5.99 cents per kilowatt hour of generated heat and received 0.5 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity fed into the public grid. The company paid for the maintenance (e.g. chimney sweeps and repairs) for the unit. The first home power plants were installed in Hamburg (around 60 units by May 2011). Others followed in Celle / Veilchengrund, Bremen , Munich , Düsseldorf , Cologne , Bielefeld and Leipzig .

According to the company, 450 small power plants had been built by March 2012. According to media reports, the sluggish sales led to the dismissal of Lichtblick CEO Christian Friege at the beginning of May 2012 and to internal restructuring. In addition to organizational problems, the technology for which Volkswagen is responsible should also have been the cause of the hesitant expansion.

After about 600 installed home power plants, Lichtblick presented a new sales concept in October 2012. Property owners could now buy the power plant and choose between various service models such as maintenance contracts and operational management contracting from Lichtblick. In May 2014 it became known that Lichtblick and Volkswagen could not agree on a continuation of the cooperation during contract negotiations. A total of around 1500 units had been installed by the time sales were completely discontinued. Since the end of the collaboration with Lichtblick, Volkswagen has continued to produce the power plants under the name EcoBlue 2.0 .

Efficiency / environmental impact

The home power plant achieves an electrical efficiency of approx. 32 percent with an overall efficiency (thermal and electrical) of approx. 92 percent. In conventional base load power plants , around 25 to 46 percent (electrical) is achieved, in gas and steam combined cycle power plants up to 60 percent (electrical).

Compared to conventional energy generation, up to 60 percent carbon dioxide is saved (when the heat produced is fully used). Lichtblick considers electricity generation from natural gas to be an interim solution. In the long term, the company wants to switch to biomethane.