Energy Efficiency

Dispersed Generation at the Consumer

Mainly thanks to its cooperation with business customers with a CHP installation (CHP = combined heat and power) Nuon has gained extensive experience with dispersed generation. We expect a lot from this form of cooperation between Nuon and customers in the future. Dispersed generation is now also coming within reach of consumers at home.  

The energy market is undergoing rapid development, leading to a fundamental change in our relationship with customers in the coming years. We too are helping to drive this change in the market. Customers with domestic micro-generators will be able to partly replace the energy they buy from their supplier with their own homegrown electricity. There are promising sustainable techniques on the market that are currently being tested in laboratories. Only after these have been tried out at test customers will Nuon be able to draw conclusions about their technical and commercial feasibility. At present we are not making any specific technological choices as we are convinced that no single technology will achieve industry standard status and that many options will become available for dispersed generation. In 2008 we will test as many of these technologies and combinations of technologies as possible. In this way, we can determine which ones best suit our portfolio, alongside high-efficiency boilers and, soon, solar panels.

In 2007 “Stichting Slim met Gas” (Smart with Gas Foundation) took delivery of the first Micro CHP of Remeha, marking a major milestone. Nuon participates in this foundation together with Eneco, Essent and Gasterra. In the first weeks of 2008 Nuon will receive 33 boilers from Remeha. The foundation will test 100 boilers in normal residential circumstances during a 1 to 2 year period. This seemingly good news was also slightly disappointing. Nuon had hoped to carry out an initial small-scale test with Remeha boilers in 2007 in order to prepare a large-scale test involving 1,000 boilers in 2008. Evidently, however, the boiler manufacturers prefer to await the results of the first tests before upscaling production and undertaking to deliver large numbers. 

In 2007 we also looked for new partners for the development of other micro generation technologies. Nuon has signed a partnership agreement with the Australian company CFCL and boiler manufacturer Remeha to develop a fuel cell boiler. This boiler will look like an ordinary high-efficiency boiler. Unlike the Micro CHP this boiler will mainly produce electricity with heating as a by-product. The power generation capacity of 1 kW is sufficient to provide an average household with energy. The natural gas is used more efficiently and the CO2 emissions are reduced by 25 - 60% compared to, respectively, gas-fired  and conventional coal-fired power stations. The fuel cell boiler can be installed without adjustments to the wiring and mains as the appliance uses the existing installation of the high-efficiency boiler. We expect to receive the first test unit in mid-June 2008.

Combined heat and power in the business market

The Energy Solutions Department (EnSo) of Nuon Business takes care of the management and operation of energy installations of business customers. After going through a period of restructuring in the past years, the installed CHP capacity of Nuon EnSo remained stable at 110 MWe in 2007. 

Nuon EnSo is targeting growth in the horticulture sector, where the trend towards the formation of horticulture clusters and larger gas engines continued in 2007. Larger engines are more efficient and better equipped to meet the higher capacity demands of the constantly expanding horticulture companies. Stimulated by the rising energy prices, the installed CHP capacity in the Netherlands increased by more than 450 MWe. Nuon EnSo is currently focusing on large-scale generation. Nuon’s contribution to the Dutch CHP fleet is therefore limited. Despite this modest contribution, Nuon EnSo is the largest CHP service provider in the Netherlands. The total reduction of CO2 emissions due to the application of Nuon EnSo CHPs ran to 132,000 tons in 2007.

Our leadership as a service provider was achieved thanks to our investments in knowledge and research as well as the broadening of our range of services. In 2007 the trading platform for customers with a CHP installation was expanded further. The platform enables customers to trade directly in electricity. In addition, we worked to improve the price transparency of CHP-generated electricity. This transparency gives customers better insight into the price differences between their self-generated electricity and electricity purchased from the grid.  With the aid of these instruments, customers can optimise the economic performance of their CHP installations while we reduce the barriers to outsourcing to Nuon. In 2008 we are placing even more emphasis on  flexibility, advice and insight into energy flows.