Combined heat and power technology

Mahmoud Abu-Ebid, chief technical advisor of Defra who heads the CHPQA programme in the UK, with Gary Sturgeon, a UK government official on Quality Assurance for Combined Heat and Power (CHPQA) policy, visited the FOI last Wednesday as part of a three-day visit to Malta co-ordinated by the Energy directorate of the Malta Resources Authority (MRA) and made possible through the EU's Technical Assistance Information Exchange Unit (TAIEX) funding.

The main aims of the visit to Malta was for the EU technical experts on CHP to help the authority implement EU legislation on co-generation, as well as meeting business operators to discuss this legislation and any foreseen difficulties in its implementation.

At the FOI meeting, the CHP experts, accompanied by Ing. Charles Buttigieg from the MRA, met FOI council members Godwin Micallef and Mario Duca, who are also FOI Environment Committee chairman and vice-chairman respectively, as well as FOI executive Cecilia Vella.

In his introduction to CHP, Mr Abu-Ebid stated that as CHP is energy-efficient and an environment-friendly technology, its implementation is being encouraged throughout the EU, with member states introducing incentives to help business operators, particularly with the initial outlay required to install the technology.

This technology would enable the user to save on distribution losses incurred when electricity is supplied through the grid and would also recover the heat generated. Thus, CHP would benefit a wide array of sectors whose operations would require a large source of low pressure heated water/steam (as in the case of boilers) or cold atmospheres (as in the case of controlled room temperatures).

As to the payback period of this investment, Mr Abu-Ebid pointed out that this would depend on the level of maintenance a company would carry out on its machinery and whether CHP would be also used to replace boilers in which case the payback period would be extensively reduced.

Besides giving the EU experts a general picture on the Maltese situation, particularly that of the manufacturing sector, as regards electricity consumption, the FOI officials highlighted various problems encountered by private industrialists when attempting to introduce environment-friendly processes and the generation of energy. They stressed that government must be prepared to grant fiscal incentives to those operators who invest in technologies like CHP.

In addition to the meeting with FOI officials, the Federation drew up an intensive programme of factory visits for the technical experts to help industry conform to the respective legislation and explain the benefits resulting from CHP.

Visits were organised to The General Soft Drinks Co. Ltd, Swan Laundry & Dry Cleaning Co. Ltd, AIS Group of Companies, Trelleborg Sealing Solutions Malta Ltd, and ST Microelectronics (Malta) Ltd.