There is a demand for developments of the distributed energy system using a small-scale gas turbine. The steam injection configuration can improve the thermal efficiency of simple and regenerative gas-turbine cycles. In this paper, the performance characteristics of two types of regenerative steam-injection gas-turbine (RSTIG) systems are analyzed and they are compared with the performances of the simple, regenerative, water injection and steam injected gas-turbine (STIG) cycles. The thermal efficiencies of the RSTIG systems are higher than those of the regenerative, water injection and STIG systems and the specific power is larger than that of the regenerative cycle. The optimum pressure-ratio for maximum efficiency of the RSTIG systems is relatively low. Furthermore, the steam-injection configuration can be applied in the flexible heat-and-power cogeneration system and the total efficiency of the RSTIG cogeneration system reaches more than 70% (HHV). (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.