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The
woodchip store
- installing the floor and archimedes screw.
Plumbing
in - Ron Hughes and assistant
The
first woodchip delivery
Medwyn
Jones the builder
The Archimedes screw that feeds the woodchip to
the boiler inside the woodchip store
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A
big reduction in our carbon footprint!
December
2007
Trigonos
has installed a new woodchip boiler, replacing all
heating oil and about 90% of our gas. The boiler
uses Welsh woodchip and supplies all our hot water
and central heating.
We saw this investment as an appropriate local response
to global problems: climate change and unsustainable
dependence on crude oil and gas. The project has
resulted in:
-
replacing oil and gas with woodchip, reducing
our CO2 emissions by approximately 75% (from
87 to 15 tonnes pa)*. This includes all emissions
transportation and processing of the raw materials
-
sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide emissions
being reduced by around 85%
- the
use of around 55 tonnes of woodchip a year,
all of which will come from within a radius
of 40 miles of Trigonos. The current supplier
is based in Corris and uses waste timber from
local plantations
-
a woodchip boiler that operates at around 92%
efficiency, compared with 25% or less for an
open wood fire. The waste product will be only
1500 kg of wood ash p.a. (think 1000 bags of
flour!) which we can use on the land as a very
good fertiliser.
This
project has taken 5 years from the first enquiries
to fruition. It has been an expensive project in
capital cost terms, coming to just over £150,000.
In part this is because the old system that has
been replaced involved eight separate oil and gas
boilers in three separate boiler houses. We now
have a single boiler house with one wood chip boiler
and an LPG boiler for back-up.We
estimate the woodchip will provide 95+% of our need
with the balance from gas.
We have been very fortunate to gain a grant from
the
Wood Energy Business Scheme (run by the Forestry
Commission) of £66,000 (under EU Objective
1). Without this we could not have gone ahead. The
balance of £84,000 has been raised as a loan
through Triodos
Bank, with repayment over 20 years. We hope
the cost of borrowing will be offset by the savings
on fuel costs, woodchip currently being significantly
cheaper than oil or gas, and less variable in price.
We hope this will be a beacon project and an inspiration
to people and organisations locally and throughout
Wales.
The
following were the main contributors to this very
successful project:
Dulas
Ltd
- Biomass Energy Specialists; Pensel
- Architect; Jones & Williams - Building Contractor;
Ron Hughes Heating & Plumbing - Heating engineer.
*Based
on DEFRA calculations
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