Tecogen® Inc. designs, manufactures, markets, and maintains high efficiency,
ultra-clean cogeneration products including natural gas engine-driven combined
heat and power, air conditioning systems, and water heaters for residential,
commercial, recreational and industrial use. The company is known for cost efficient,
environmentally friendly and reliable products for distributed power generation
that, through patented technology, nearly eliminate criteria pollutants and
significantly reduce a customer’s carbon footprint.
Tecogen’s natural gas powered cogeneration systems (also known as combined
heat and power or “CHP”) are efficient because they drive electric
generators or compressors, which reduce the amount of electricity purchased
from the utility while recovering the engine’s waste heat for water heating,
space heating, and/or air conditioning at the customer’s building.
Tecogen manufactures three types of CHP products:
•Cogeneration units that supply electricity and hot water including
the InVerde® 100, InVerde e+®, CM-75 and CM-60;
•Chillers that provide air-conditioning and hot water marketed under the
TECOCHILL® brand name; and
•Ilios® branded high-efficiency water heaters.
All of these are standardized, modular, CHP products that reduce energy costs,
carbon emissions, and dependence on the electric grid. Tecogen’s products
allow customers to produce power on-site in parallel with the electric grid,
or stand alone when no utility grid is available via inverter-based black-start
capability. Because our CHP systems also produce clean, usable heat energy,
they provide economic advantages to customers who can benefit from the use of
hot water, chilled water, air conditioning and heating.
Traditional customers for our cogeneration and chiller systems include hospitals
and nursing homes, schools and universities, health clubs and spas, hotels and
motels, office and retail buildings, food and beverage processors, multi-unit
residential buildings, laundries, ice rinks, swimming pools, factories, municipal
buildings, and military installations; however, the economic feasibility of
using our systems is not limited to these customer types. Market drivers include
the price of natural gas, local electricity rates, environmental regulations,
and governmental energy policies, as well as customers’ desire to become
more environmentally responsible.
Through our factory service centers in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
Michigan, New Jersey, and New York our specialized technical staff maintain
our products via long-term service contracts. The Company has shipped over 2,300
units, some of which have been operating for almost 25 years.
Our CHP technology uses low-cost, mass-produced engines, which we modify to
run on natural gas. In the case of our mainstay cogeneration and chiller products,
the engines have proven to be cost-effective and reliable. In 2009, in response
to the changing regulatory requirements for stationary engines, our research
team developed an economically feasible process for removing air pollutants
from the engine exhaust. This technologys U.S. and foreign patents were granted
beginning in October 2013 with other domestic and foreign patents granted or
applications pending. Branded Ultera™, the ultra clean emissions technology,
repositions our engine driven products in the marketplace, making them comparable
environmentally with other technologies such as fuel cells, but at a much lower
cost and greater efficiency. Because of this breakthrough design for emission
control, our natural gas-fueled CHP modules fitted with the patented Ultera
control technology are certified by the California Air Resources Board ("CARB")
as meeting its stringent 2007 emissions requirements, the same emissions standard
used to certify fuel cells and the same emissions levels as a state-of-the-art
central power plant. We now offer our Ultera emissions control technology as
an option on all our products or as a stand-alone application for the retrofitting
of other rich-burn spark-ignited reciprocating internal combustion engines.
Tecogen products are designed as compact modular units that are intended to
be installed in multiples when utilized in larger CHP plants. The majority of
our CHP modules are installed in multi-unit sites with applications ranging
up to 12 units. This approach has significant advantages over utilizing single
larger units, allowing building placement in constrained urban settings and
redundancy to mitigate service outages. Redundancy is particularly relevant
in regions where the electric utility has formulated tariff structures that
include high “peak demand” charges. Such tariffs are common in many
areas of the country, and are applied by such utilities as Southern California
Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric, Consolidated Edison of New York, and National
Grid of Massachusetts. Because these tariffs are assessed based on customers’
peak monthly demand charge over a very short interval, typically only 15 minutes,
a brief service outage for a system comprised of a single unit can create a
high demand charge and therefore be highly detrimental to the monthly savings
of the system. For multiple unit sites, a full system outage that will create
a high demand charge is less likely, so consequently, these customers have a
greater probability of capturing peak demand savings.
We manufacture natural gas engine-driven cogeneration systems, heat pumps,
and chillers, all of which are CHP products that deliver more than one form
of energy. Our cogeneration products are all standard, modular units that come
pre-packaged from the company’s factory for ease of installation at a
customer’s site. The package incorporates the engine, generator, heat-recovery
equipment, system controls, electrical switchgear, emission controls, and a
data controller for remote monitoring and data transmission; minimizing the
cost and complexity of installing the equipment at a site. This packaged, modular
system simplifies CHP technology for small to mid-sized customers who typically
are less experienced with the implementation and benefits of a CHP system.
All of our cogeneration systems and most of our chillers use the same engine,
the TecoDrive 7400 model. This is an engine modified by us to use natural gas
fuel. The small 25-ton chiller uses a similar engine, the 3000 model. We worked
closely with the engine manufacturers and the gas industry (including the Gas
Research Institute) in the 1980s and 1990s to modify the engine and validate
its durability. For the Ilios water heater, we introduced a technologically
advanced Ford engine that is enhanced for industrial applications.
Our commercial product line includes:
•the InVerde®, InVerde e+®, and TECOGEN® cogeneration units;
•TECOCHILL® chillers;
•Ilios® high-efficiency water heaters; and
•Ultera™ emissions control technology.
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