Many renewable energy systems capable of generating heating and hot water for your home require your property to be very well insulated. This means that technologies such as ground source heat pumps and air to water heat pumps are better suited to new and recently built properties. Heat pumps also work better with underfloor heating (because they operate at similarly low temperatures) which is not an easy retrofit in existing buildings.
Biomass boilers however work very much like a conventional gas or oil fired boiler and as such are capable of meeting the heating requirements of a conventional, often existing, heating system in older, poorly insulated properties. In place of fossil fuels, biomass boilers burn wood chip, wood pellet or logs. As they use wood for fuel, which emit the same amount of carbon dioxide as is absorbed while the plants were growing, they are classed as a carbon-neutral/renewable energy and qualify for the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme (more below).
The most advanced biomass boilers are fully automatic and control the amount of fuel and air supplied to the combustion chamber, making them extremely efficient. These boilers are fed with wood chips or pellets from a large hopper sited nearby. Manufacturers recommend a hopper big enough to hold a year’s supply of fuel as this minimises transport and delivery costs for fuel, as well as work for the owner, however if space is limited a smaller storage facility, requiring more frequent fuel deliveries, is possible. Maintenance is minimal – although you will need to clean it and remove the ash about once a month.
There a multitude of domestic and commercial biomass boilers on the market that will suit any size of property. Give us a call to arrange a free site survey from which we can calculate the size of boiler you need and talk you through storage options.
Renewable Heat Incentive
On 10 March 2011, the Government announced the details of the Renewable Heat Incentive; a policy aimed at increasing the number of homes using renewable heat sources by offering a long-term tariff payment for heat generated.
The first phase, currently active, covers only non-domestic properties. The second phase of the RHI scheme, from October 2012, will see domestic households moved to the same form of long-term tariff support offered to the non-domestic sector in the first phase.
In the interim, up to 25,000 installations from July will be supported by a “RHI Premium Payment” to help people cover the purchase price of green heating systems (if fitted before 31 March 2012). For Biomass boilers it will be £950, but only for properties where no mains gas is present.
Those taking up the Premium will then be eligible for a RHI tariff from October next year when the Green Deal begins, as will anyone else who has had eligible equipment installed from July 2009.
Conditions
In return for the payments, participants will be asked to agree to monitor and record performance to provide some feedback on how the equipment works in practice.
Criteria
To qualify for the RHI Premium Payment, applicants must:
- Install a qualifying system – this includes Solar Thermal
- Have a well-insulated home based on its energy performance certificate
What is the long term tariff?
No tariffs have been published for the domestic RHI. For non domestic installations, the tariff is currently 4.3p per kW hour for ground source heat pumps. Within the Government’s ‘Renewable Heat Incentive Consultation on the proposed RHI financial support scheme’ document, published in February 2010, the proposed tariff for domestic Ground Source Heat Pump installations up to 45kW was 9p per kW hour.
Calculating the tariff
According to the same consultation document, each installation’s tariff entitlement will be established by multiplying the proposed tariff per kWh with a deemed heat requirement (number of kWh per year). This is established through an assessment process based on SAP (or variant) at the beginning of the project, rather than measuring production via a meter, which might encourage a household to generate a deliberate surplus of heat or hot water to increase the tariff payable.
For each individual property, the SAP calculation will establish the deemed heat load for that property based on the average heat load of a property of the same type with reasonable energy efficiency measures installed (for instance cavity wall and basic loft insulation). Multiplying the amount of ‘useful’ heat contributed by the renewable energy system (in kW) by the tariff will give the householder the amount of long term tariff payable.
Renewable Energies: Investment returns
The Government incentives for installing renewable energy systems provide compensation to home owners for the cost of installation and pay an investment return over a fixed number of years (yet to be confirmed). According to the ‘Renewable Heat Incentive Consultation on the proposed RHI financial support scheme’ document, this investment is proposed at 12% across all technologies (6% for solar thermal).
The Government recognises that, as with any other investment, householders and businesses will be looking for a return on this investment that reflects the opportunity cost of capital and the level of risk and effort involved.
The proposed tariff structure also allows generators to retain the benefit of any future rises in fossil fuel prices. If fossil fuel prices rise, renewable energy generators will save more money compared with a situation in which they had stayed with fossil fuel heating. Conversely, if fuel prices fall, they will save less.
