Turbec, founded in 1998 as a jointly owned subsidiary of Volvo and ABB, redesigned the vehicle-based micro turbine into a more robust industrial product and combined it with a sophisticated high speed generator and power electronics to produce base load power from a static, low cost installation.
This concept, known as "distributed energy" refers to the installation of small, localized on-site power plants placed in clusters or connected to the power grid in a network. The micro-turbine based systems designed and manufactured in Europe by Turbec are ideally suited to distributed energy applications. Based on a combination of a small gas powered turbine and a directly driven high speed generator, the design of the Turbec T100 units is very simple and the pressure ratio is low. The high speed generator is on the same shaft as the turbine compressor so no gearbox is required and the entire system uses only two bearings – keeping maintenance costs significantly lower than conventional power systems which rely on reciprocating motors and gearboxes to drive the generator.
The electricity generated by the high-speed generator is then converted into useful voltage and frequency by sophisticated power electronics integrated into the system. A useful feature of the Turbec T100 Micro-turbine is that it uses a combustor that can run on a variety of fuels such as natural gas, ethanol, or biogas.
Turbec T100 Microturbines have extremely low emissions and are fully CARB certified. The hot, low emission exhaust also carries significant thermal energy which can be captured as it leaves the micro-turbine and be used for heating and cooling applications. Known as co-generation, or tri-generation, the reuse of this heat makes the micro-turbines an extremely efficient producer of energy with a combined electrical and thermal efficiency approaching 80%.
