[Mr170IQ]

"It's also more efficient, pollutes less and is less expensive than buying power from the grid..."

Amazing! Three lies in one short sentence.

No, it's not a lie, exactly. The concept is called "co-generation", and it involves using the waste heat from the electrical generator for industrial heating. IF you need ALL of the waste heat, then it becomes much more efficient than simply generating electric power from the fuel and also producing heat by burning fuel.

[Geritol]

Not only can they extract more energy by using the waste heat, that some power plants use for something but most do not, but onsight power production also saves on the costs and losses of transmission.

Between 2 and 10 percent of all generated electricity is lost in transmission. these losses come from the following: resistive heating of hundreds of miles of cable, inductive coupling of power to the surrounding environment, and minor losses in the step-up and step-down processes.

Further, you have those millions of poles, acres of distribution points, thousands and thousands of miles of cable, thousands of service trucks, mllions of oil filled transformers, and a few other miner details impacting the cost and overall efficiency.

Compare all that to having natural gas exhaust coming out of each building, gas pipelines, heat exchangers, maintenance on each setup, and additional building space and infrastructure in each location instead of one remote site.

On top of these, you have the added cost in lives from our current centralized power system. HOw many people have died because they ran into a power pole? Without centralized power our streets could be wider and safer....