News / Videos

Several field trials have started with biomass fired Microgen Combined Heat and Power Solutions

Feb 22, 2024

This winter several field trials have started with biomass fired Microgen Combined Heat and Power Solutions. Tests take place in all kinds of different special environments. One of these locations is high in the Japanese Alps. An off grid  Kira pellet  gasifier system powered by a MEC Free Piston Stirling engine was installed at a ski resort close to Sapporo in December 2023. Extra efficiency was obtained by cooling the Stirling cooling liquid with the abundant snow present. Besides generating power, which is about 24-28 kwh electric a day, the heat is used for space and place heating.

First EU-303-5 certified woodlog MCHP

Apr 7, 2023

Microgen Energy Corporation is proud to announce the first EU 303-5 certified woodlog Micro Combined Heat and Power in the world. During the last 2 years, Microgen and Waltis, a successful and innovative biomass heating company from Slovenia, have been working on a robust and reliable woodlog-fired Micro Combined Heat and Power unit. Beta units will soon be available for the first customers who are willing to participate in testing this product. In collaboration with early customers, Microgen and Waltis plan to further advance the unit in the coming years. For further details about this new product called WoodGen S-Tronic and pre-sales orders, please contact Wim Dieleman.

HIDDEN CHAMPIONS: MORE THEN 45.000 RUNHOURS

May 26, 2021

Microgen’s Stirling unit is basically maintenance free. People usually only report to us in case of problems. We hear only little about all those thousands of units which are running in the field… Therefore, we were more than pleased to unexpectedly run into the following: a webpage from the Kothe family from Marl in Germany. Their unit, installed in 2012, had already made over 46.000 operating hours!

This January however, we heard that the unit had shut down shortly after. Something which of course came as a disappointment for us, but also something we wanted to understand.

After a brief investigation it became clear that the cause was a non-MEC stirling related problem: flue gas condensate dripping back from the heat exchanger into the burner. This was related to the construction of the early Remeha units.  After replacing the ceramic collar and thermocouple the unit is back up and running, no longer with the Kothe family but at the Microgen Center in Doetinchem, the Netherlands. An endurant and lasting machine as it is, we are keeping tight track of its behaviour. The 50.000 hours milestone is almost in sight! The Remeha unit at the Kothe family has a new stirling engine installed and with some finetuning of the burner it is also running smoothly again.

More info about the experiences of the Family Koethe with the MEC Stirling unit as well as their other activities to come to more efficient and cleaner home heating and energy systems can be found on: https://kothe-marl.de/bhkw.html

Storage for solar energy is being tested in Bremerhaven

May 2, 2020

Whilst the world’s attention of course is at the Covid-19 pandemic, still beautiful and important things for the world’s future in the field of sustainable/renewable energy are happening. Microgen Engine Corporation is proud to be part of some of these green developments. Worldwide, several respected universities and research organizations are currently working on Heat/Thermal Storage Projects. The question is how to do the extraction/conversion of the thermal energy into electricity ? Heat engines based on the Stirling Cycle, like the ones from Microgen Engine Corporation, are amongst the promising solutions. The University of Bremerhaven, also using the Microgen engine, proudly presented their Energy Conversion Unit this February. This unit is part of the European “Socrates” project, using Calcium Carbonate as the storage medium and Solar Energy as the prime energy source. The unit is ready for shipment to the South of Spain where it will be integrated with other hardware and of course further tested.