Biomass Combined Heat and Power units, better known as CHP have been around for decades and are becoming more and more prevalent for large users of heat and electricity, such as holiday & leisure parks, poultry broiler units and manufacturing facilities.
Whereas solar will generate large peaks of electricity when the sun is out and only small amounts during the winter months, CHP's are designed to cover your base load of electricity and will generate continuously whether it is night or day, summer or winter.
In short, Wood chips or wood pellets are fed into a gasifier which burns the wood at 1000 degrees to release the gas which is then filtered and cooled before being used to run an engine with a generator on the front of it. The advantage of wood fuelled gasifiers is that generally the fuel used to produce the electricity and heat is sourced locally so there is a wealth of suppliers to keep prices competitive and the fuel chain should not be subject to large fluctuations caused by other things going on in the world..
Using a figure of £150 per tonne of wood chip, a Volter 45 will consume 38kg per hour, giving a fuel cost of £5.70 per hour.
We provide installation and maintenance services to a number of different CHP's and our engineers are some of the most skilled in the country when it comes to wood fuelled CHP units.
We are the UK stockists for parts for Volter and Burkhardt CHP's and can also provide technical support to Spanner units.