Acquisition of American DG Energy, Inc.	9 Months Ended
Acquisition of American DG Energy, Inc.	Sep. 30, 2018
Business Combinations [Abstract]
Acquisition of American DG Energy, Inc.	Acquisition of American DG Energy Inc. On May 18, 2017, we completed our acquisition, by means of a stock-for-stock merger, of 100% of the outstanding common shares of American DG Energy Inc. (“American DG Energy" or "ADGE”), a company which installs, owns, operates and maintains complete distributed generation of electricity systems, or DG systems or energy systems, and other complementary systems at customer sites and sells electricity, hot water, heat and cooling energy under long-term contracts at prices guaranteed to the customer to be below conventional utility rates, by means of a merger of one of our wholly owned subsidiaries with and into ADGE such that ADGE became a wholly owned subsidiary of Tecogen. We acquired ADGE to, among other reasons, expand our product offerings and benefit directly from the long-term contracted revenue streams generated by these installations. We gained control of ADGE on May 18, 2017 by issuing common stock of the Company to the prior stockholders of ADGE.