HPTurbo.Tech is a startup founded in 2019 in Tallinn Estonia, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. The business target is the distribution, installation and service of turbine-powered heat and power cogeneration systems. The focus is on improving privately operated heat and power plants' environmental efficiency by consulting clients for optimal warmth and power usage and production with ecological and economically efficient solutions. HPTurbo.Tech always takes an integrating approach to offer an optimised solution to clients.
In 2016, Felice de Grandi was looking to replace the 20-year-old gas boiler in his single-family house in Switzerland. The new installation should be green technology but also economically reasonable. More he was digging into the subject, the more it started to interest him. But he realised that the number of possibilities with nowadays technologies is wast and not immediately understandable in its complexity. He spent weeks understanding solar systems, wind generators, heat pumps, heat and power cogeneration systems with gas engines, sterling motors, and turbines. He looked at many different storage systems for heat, electricity and hydrogen and checked out many materials like heat storing concrete, latency materials and others. Last but not least, he did a lot of number crunching to see behind the nice-looking promises of different system vendors. In the end, it should not be green technology only, but the energy production should yield at a reasonable price per kWh.
He also wondered if concepts from people like Elon Musk used in California would also work in Europe, where you have only 8 hours of sunlight in winter and a lot of clouds, rainy days and snow in this dark season of the year. It has to be said that Felice de Grandi despite his formation as a lawyer and spending many years in banking as a derivatives trader, he was not a greenhorn on the technical side. Among other companies, he successfully built up a business airline with a fleet of Bombardier private jets and a racing company operating Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche race cars.
After all his studies, he came up with a lot of insights. Deciding on solar panels and heat pump would be a great thing also in Europe. However, not only in Switzerland, there will be still a substantial gap to bridge in the dark season, and if you have even servers running in the basement, you would always be highly depending on the public grid. On top of that, what to do with the outdoor swimming pool? How would it be possible to heat it in an environmentally friendly way reducing carbon footprint?
He found out that the right solution could be a heat and power cogeneration plant (CHP system). Obviously, producing heat and power where you can immediately use it, results in attracting concepts with over 90% efficiency, low energy costs that are faring better than the centralized conventional power and heat production which has transportation losses of 40 - 60%. On top of that you would gain substantial independency of the public grid with a CHP-System, perhaps combined with solar panels. The only downside was that combustion engines or even sterling motors operate conventional CHP systems and therefore were not built for 8760 hours or 7 days/24 hours constant running time per year because of the many moving parts they for sure will have too high maintenance costs for a private house.
With this in mind, he started to search for a CHP-System operated by a turbine. In the beginning, he only found systems with combustion engines and sterling motors. He also found fuel cell systems that were only producing 1 kWh or less, which was not enough for a big house. He could barely understand why there are huge power plants with gas turbines, but no one had transferred this reliable technology to a smaller size for private houses. He knows that turbines and jet engines are far more reliable and durable than standard motors from his years in the airline business. He knows turbines can run 10'000 hours with ease. A typical motor is at the end of his life with that amount of working hours and has to be exchanged.
Finally, at the beginning of 2018, de Grandi found out that a high tech company in Eindhoven in the Netherlands had got the EU certification to sell a micro gas turbine-powered combined heat and power plant called EnerTwin. The company was MTT, Micro Turbine Technology B.V. They had already started 20 years ago to develop this system. Around 2013 they entered into a field test with Dresdner Stadtwerke in Germany to test several EnerTwin under real-world conditions. After five years of field testing, MTT applied for the certification in the European Union.
Felice de Grandi met with Willy Ahout, the CEO of MTT. The two men had an excellent relationship immediately. One year later, in March 2019, MTT got also the SVGW certification for Switzerland. At the same time, Felice de Grandi and his son Dario de Grandi founded a distribution company named HPTurbo.Tech, standing for Heat Power Turbine Technology.
HPTurbo.Tech aims to help house owners find their way through the jungle of nowadays energy production technologies and help them install green technology with affordable costs at reasonable energy prices. EnerTwin is one of the major products HPTurbo.tech offers to its clients. If a solar power system with a heat pump is the right solution for a specific client we will propose this to him. Solar power might not always be the correct solution. And solar power is for sure not the only efficient technology to produce green energy in Europe, whatever politicians might believe. To apply green technology HPTurbo.tech looks at every single case and applies the technology which suits best. HPTurbo.tech digs into the details. Solar systems alone are not the solution to all our problems; there are many cases where solar systems just do not fit.
Sometimes a combination is a right solution. Sometimes a CHP system will make a much better job for the environment than a solar system. Things have to be judged without "religious" beliefs and politics. Facts and know-how count, and at the end, a solution has to be efficient and must make oconomically sense. There is enough technology out there which is suitable for nature and is economically payable.
Green technology is not expensive if it is applied correctly.
Felice de Grandi
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