The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Advanced Manufacturing Office announced today the release of the updated Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Installation Database, a database that contains a comprehensive listing of combined heat and power installations throughout the country. CHP, an efficient and clean approach to generating on-site electric power and useful thermal energy from a single fuel source is a highly efficient way to generate electricity and thermal energy that provides facilities with increased reliability and enhanced economic viability.  Today, there are 82.6 GW of CHP installed at nearly 4,400 sites around the country.

The DOE CHP Installation Database is a data collection effort sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and maintained by ICF Inc. The updated database includes data as of December 31, 2016 and provides information on current CHP installations across the United States. It is designed to make navigation easy for visitors to the website, allowing users to:

  • Search for specific CHP systems or groups of systems.
  • Sort and filter data by categories such as application (building/facility) or fuel type.
  • Download a list of the currently operating CHP systems in the database as well as a set of summary tables for the data. In order to access the data for download, the user must register by setting up a username and password.
  • Send an email to provide any information about operating CHP systems in the U.S.

This new release of the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Installation Database reflects an increase in the overall U.S. CHP capacity, from 81.1 GW in 2015 to 82.6 GW in 2016.  The number of CHP sites grew from 4,309 to 4,395 in 2016.  This growth was fueled by the 173 new CHP installations that were entered into the database in 2016.  These installations were spread throughout the U.S., with new systems in 34 states and the District of Columbia.  The states with the most new CHP installations were New York (39), Massachusetts (27), California (19), and Pennsylvania (11).  Many of the former installations were older, larger inefficient systems. But now, many of the new installations are located at commercial and institutional sites, thus continuing the move toward smaller sized CHP systems. The 2016 installations included 30 new systems in multi-family buildings, hospitals, colleges/universities, and installations at several other commercial, institutional, and industrial application types. 

Natural gas was the predominant fuel type for new CHP installations, and supplied the fuel for 80% of new systems in 2016.  However, 16% of all new CHP capacity in 2016 was fueled by waste or biomass fuels, which is twice the typical proportion of CHP capacity fueled by biomass.  CHP systems save the U.S. 1.8 Quads of fuel each year, avoiding 241 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually.

Visit the DOE CHP Installation website to see newly released 2016 data on CHP systems operating in the U.S.

EERE's Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO) supports early stage applied research and development of new materials, information, and processes that improve American manufacturing’s energy efficiency, as well as platform technologies for manufacturing energy-related products.