New ideas in distributed cogeneration and power engineering.

This paper presents examples of technologies for distributed energy generation developed at the The Szewalski Institute of Fluid Flow Machinery of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Gdańsk. These are combined heat and power (CHP) units (generating heat and electricity) for houses with a power from several to tens of kW and for municipalities in the form of the Municipal Energy Centres (with a capacity of several hundred kW up to several MW). A unique project, specializing in ‘energy-plus’ technologies for individual houses and other buildings, which aims to build a Research Centre of PAS in Jabłonna is also presented. These are key technologies for energy sector with respect to distributed generation. Additionally, the article discusses the conditions and opportunities for the development of civil energy generation in our country. Civic energy generation is a great vision in which the citizen becomes an entity and do not subject to the energy market, and additionally has its virtual advisor in the form of smart grid and data processing technologies in a ‘digital cloud’.