A Day at GTI Energy: Combined Heat & Power and Renewable Energy Laboratory

Deck: 

Unique conversations

Fortnightly Magazine - December 2023
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GTI Energy embraces a vision for integrated, low-carbon, low-cost energy systems that leverage gases, liquids, infrastructure, and efficiency to meet the urgent challenges presented by climate change and global energy access. To fully comprehend these words, there is nothing like a visit to its eighteen acres of facilities close to Chicago, to take in the depth and breadth of what goes on at these specialized labs with equipment for design, testing, and analysis of advanced energy technologies. PUF's Executive Editor Steve Mitnick and Editor-In-Chief Lori Burkhart were fortunate to pass inside the gates of GTI Energy to view the future of energy. We engaged with scientists and engineers to better understand several of their projects.

 

PUF's Steve Mitnick: What is going on here at CHPRE?

Tim Kingston: A number of projects are going on in this lab, but the first I want to talk about, and the reason why I'm standing out here is we have a microgrid test bed. Microgrids are systems that have controllable loads and controllable energy sources. 

When we think about controllable loads, we think about flexible fuel. Our microgrid has electric-based space heating and water heating, as well as thermally based or fuel fired.

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