Sell the electricity, keep the heat.

Generally a good idea:

Each molecule of fuel in a conventional power plant, he said, yields around 27 percent of it’s electrons as electricity. Heat and friction dissipate into the atmosphere as byproducts and are lost forever. The electricity goes into the grid and travels over miles of power lines, subject to “transmission sag,” which can rob up to 30-percent of the power from the grid, especially in humid areas.

“When we developed this country these central power plants were right where they needed to be; where the people were,” he said. “It was a great example of distributed generation at the time.” As the country grew however, much of the power must travel much farther.

That same molecule of fuel spent in a BluePoint CCHP plant yields 33 percent to 34 percent electricity, said Archbold. The deal-maker is that “because we are on site, we can capture our heat and friction and run it into the hotel’s hot water heat loop. They can literally turn off their boilers.”

Excess heat can also be pushed into absorption chillers which provide cold air and water.

Capturing the heat byproduct increases the overall efficiency to 85-percent, compared to 27percent from the grid.

Archbold summed up his business model. “They pay for the fuel. We sell them the electricity, and they get the excess heat for free.”

This sort of model could possibly work for a number of "alt energy" distributed generation facilities, not just microturbines. The upfront costs for a company buying into a relatively new technology is often too daunting to justify the risk; however, if companies like this can take away that uncertainty and still provide the same benefits as "alt energy" in terms of overall cost savings due to efficiency increases, we might just have a win-win situation.