Combined Heat and Power Systems Market

Introduction

Cogeneration (also known as combined heat and power systems (CHP)) is a cluster of technologies primarily used for the concurrent generation of electricity and useful heat. This combined generation of heat and electricity is much more effective than separate generation of electricity and useful heat in a way that CHP systems offers improved energy efficiency, reduced managing cost, low CO2 emission and others.

Growing data center capacity as business operate more processes, handle complex analytics with increasing storage requirements for customer data and employing rich media. Handling of such large data requires continuous supply of reliable power making cogeneration systems of primary importance.

Efficiency level for cogeneration systems can reach up to 80 % against separate generation of heat and electricity which provides combined efficiency of 40-50 %. CHP systems for data centers are gaining traction in the market as using such plants as source of data center power leads to energy efficient and substantial cost reduction benefits. However, another technology commercially available for powering data centers includes fuel cells.

Although CHP systems are less efficient than fuel cells but requires lesser fuel to generate the same amount of power and has a win when its ability to supply chilled water is factored. Some of the major benefits offered utilizing CHP systems for data centers are  limited reliance over external power supply, increased energy efficiency, low site carbon emission and others.

Global CHP System market for Data Centre: Market Dynamics

Regions with high electricity cost are readily adopting CHP systems primarily to save on their energy cost to provide base load power and using such systems to provide absorption cooling for the facility. Moreover, government initiatives to install CHP systems in data center facilities due to low CO2 emissions is also expected to increase its adoption rate thereby increasing the adoption of  CHP system in data centers.

Low economic life of data center IT equipment results in consumer reluctance towards adoption of CHP systems for data centers since these systems have equipment life of around 10-15 years in comparison to economic life of IT equipment which is only 2-3 years.

Global CHP System market for Data Centre: Segmentation

Data center types	Telecoms ISP’s (internet Service Provider) CoLos (Co-located server hosting facilities), Server farms Corporate data centers University/ national laboratory  Others
Facility size	200 sq.ft 200-700 sq.ft  700-1,200 sq.ft, 1,200-6,000 sq.ft  more than 6,000 sq.ft
Installation type	newly installed systems retrofit systems
Region	North America Latin America Eastern Europe Western Europe Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Middle East  Africa  Japan

Global CHP System market for Data Centre: Key Players

Some of the major players identified across CHP system market for data center includes ENER-G, Korea Electric Power Corporation, National Grid plc, Exelon Corporation, NextEra Energy, Inc., Chubu Electric Power Company, American Electric Power Company, Inc. and others.