Commercial pellet boilers Archives - Maine Energy Systems

Archive for the ‘Commercial pellet boilers’ Category

Choosing the best boiler

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

Dutch Dresser

For many pellet boilers are a whole new idea.

The latest pellet boilers are wonderfully reliable central heating systems very nearly as automatic as oil or propane systems. Some of them have the advantage of European design providing many features and a beautiful look.

However, there are differences among modern pellet boilers as fundamental as the differences between a rotary engine Mazda and a piston engine Mercedes. This piece will help you make informed judgments about the pellet boiler that will best serve your needs.

Click to enlarge

1,2 Boilers, Tube Cleaning. The ÖkoFEN pellet boiler system has a steel vertical tube boiler with a 25 year design life. Its boiler tubes are automatically cleaned daily so they never require manual cleaning.

3 Certifications. ÖkoFEN boiler systems are UL listed and available in stock with either ASME stamped vessels or EN 303-5 certified vessels depending upon the code and insurance demands of your installation. (American Society of Mechanical Engineers H stamped vessels are required in many installations and can be installed in any jurisdiction in the U.S. for any application.)

4 Ash Removal. ÖkoFEN boiler systems automatically remove the ash from their fireboxes and compress it into a handy, easily emptied storage container. In typical installations, the ash container requires emptying about four times a year, a two- to three- minute process. The ash acts like lime when spread on your garden or lawn.

5 Burner. The ÖkoFEN burner is an underfed burner. This means that there are many fewer cold starts during the heating season than with other burner types, that there is never a need for the burn chamber to be emptied of ash for a restart, and that troublesome combustion by-products (sinters, clinkers, and slag) that can plague other burner types don’t build up in this burner.

6 Burner Ashscrape. There is no ashscrape cycle in ÖkoFEN products because of the underfed burner design. The burner never needs to be cooled down for cleaning, and it frequently restarts with just the application of air after a low demand period greatly reducing the number of cold starts the system makes.

7 Output Modulation. The ÖkoFEN burner modulates its power over 17 intervals between 100% output and 33% output. Because of the careful control of combustion in the unit, the boiler is very efficient and has extremely low emissions levels at all modulation levels. This makes mass thermal storage for emissions control unnecessary with ÖkoFEN boilers.

8 Mass Thermal Storage. ÖkoFEN boiler systems modulate cleanly and restart quickly so thermal mass storage is not required with ÖkoFEN boilers. If you have unusual system demands and would like to use mass thermal storage with an ÖkoFEN, of course, you can, but if your demands are typical, save your money.

9 Reliability. ÖkoFEN boilers are very reliable; they are installed world-wide as stand-alone systems. No back-up systems are recommended or required. Of course, if you have a system you want to retain as back-up, you can do that, but it isn’t necessary.

10 Maintenance. The ÖkoFEN boiler system requires only annual maintenance by service personnel.

11 On-line Operation. The ÖkoFEN boiler system comes standard with an alarm port that will trigger dialers or other alerts. An optional Ethernet port is also available to access the data that the control unit continually gathers. That data can be viewed from any Internet connected computer with this option installed.

If you’re comparing boiler systems for your home, business, or institution, feel free to copy the Pellet Boiler Comparison Chart and use it to gather data to help with your decision.

Dutch Dresser is the Managing Director of Maine Energy Systems LLC

Tags: Boiler comparisons
Posted in Commercial pellet boilers, Fuel switching, Pellet burners, Wood pellet boiler | Comments Off

Advanced Technical Training

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Dutch Dresser, Director, Maine Energy Systems

More than twenty of Maine Energy Systems “Diamond Contractors” gathered in Bethel Monday and Tuesday of this week for advanced technical training on individual boilers and cascade systems.

Dan Wheeler, Maine Energy Systems’ engineer, and Ernst Wurm, the head engineer for OkoFEN of Austria, directed the two day event that focused expressly on topics of interest to some of the region’s most successful and most experienced pellet boiler technicians. The conversations were lively and the topics rich.

The “Diamond Contractors” were treated to a fine dinner at The Phoenix House & Well at Sunday River Monday night and a night in ski resort lodging. OkoFEN owners Herbert and Stefan Ortner were honored guests at the celebratory dinner. Following Monday night’s dinner, MESys Director Les Otten presented the annual Chairman’s Award to Dan Davis and Karl Bissex of Cutting Edge Industries, of Burke, Vermont.

Dan and Karl have been instrumental in stimulating a significant pellet central heating market in residences, municipalities, schools, and businesses in Vermont using the OkoFEN boiler. Along with a beautiful crystal award, Dan and Karl received a trip to Austria to visit the home of OkoFEN products in Niederkappel and Lembach and to enjoy the beautiful, historic country.

The last formal activity of the class was a visit to the Energy Box installed at Mt Abram Ski Area which is heating its temporary Rubb lodge.

At the close of the training, the contractors previewed new OkoFEN product lines that will be available through Maine Energy Systems later this year. Ask one of the technicians from the following companies for details:

ABM Mechanical

Heutz Premium Pellets

A R Sandri Inc

Solartechnic

Lyme Green Heat

Thayer Corporation

Cutting Edge Industries

Bruce Hermanau Plumbing and Heating

New Day Energy

Froling Energy

Woodbury Plumbing and Heating

Nason Mechanical

Posted in Boiler training, Commercial pellet boilers, District heating | Comments Off

“Better than Free”

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

I recently had the opportunity to talk with a municipal officer in a small Maine town. As in so many small towns, the large, old town office building has an old, inefficient oil boiler in the basement in desperate need of replacement. And, as in so many small towns, financial pressures force choosing allocations among many good options with the limited resources available.

In this particular case, loan money was readily available at 4.5% interest, and pellet fuel was available at a good price for a large customer.

After doing the arithmetic, the municipal official was surprised to find that changing out the building’s boiler was “better than free” in several ways. Here are excerpts from an e-mail I sent the town official after the visit.
_______________________________________________________

Dear [municipal officer,]

I did not stop by this morning to sell you a boiler. I did stop by to get your opinion on available interest rates. Thank you for your help.

At the same time, I can’t help but point out an opportunity for you that works with, or without, [grant funding]…

If I use the following assumptions:

* #2 oil use: 2500 gallons/year
* #2 oil cost: $3.80/gallon (actual current price)
* pellet cost: $210/ton
* pellet use: 20.59 tons (energy equivalent of 2500 gallons of oil)
* installed system cost: $32,000
* full system: financed at 4.5%
* payment term: 15 yrs

I arrive at the following results:

* current annual oil cost: $9,500
* annual pellet cost: $4,353.23
* annual debt service: $2,937.60
* total pellet fuel cost and debt service: $7,290.83
* net annual cash savings: $2,209.17

Obviously, if you can make a down payment on some part of the system, your savings improve noticeably. It should also be clear to anyone paying attention that oil prices will only continue to go up. Pellet prices have remained stable, or declined, over the past decade; there is no reason to expect them to increase beyond CPI increases in the foreseeable future. Maine Energy Systems will guarantee its fuel price until June 30, 2014.

This model demonstrates that you can have a brand new, renewable fuel boiler system in [your municipal building] with no immediate out of pocket expense and spend less money annually on fuel and debt service than you’re currently spending on fuel alone. We call these systems “Better than Free.”

You can confirm my figures, and play with other models, by using the calculator at

http://www.futuremetrics.com/HomeCalcTabs.html

If you’d like me to address [your elected officials] about this, I’d be delighted to do that.

Posted in Commercial pellet boilers, Fuel switching, Renewable energy, Wood pellet boiler | Comments Off

Energy box in the energy box

Friday, July 8th, 2011

Maine Energy Systems is Les Otten’s latest brainchild, and, as with so many of his ventures, the office could easily be considered an “energy box.”

In the three years this young company has been in existence, it has been continuously involved in pioneering work in the introduction of fully automatic, pellet-fired central heating systems to the United States. It has imported the world’s very best available pellet boilers, started a young, robust regional bulk pellet distribution network, facilitated the production of the first fully pnuematic bulk pellet delivery truck in the U.S., and worked with countless financial and regulatory agencies to help decision-makers understand the state-of-the-art in pellet central heating.

Today the energy box is producing an energy box.

Two heating system practices are common in Europe that haven’t yet become common in the United States–district heating and the use of “energy boxes.” District heating is the provision of heat to a number of buildings from a single boiler system; it is quite common in Western Europe. Districts large and small efficiently serve communities from clusters of residences to whole villages and segments of cities.

Energy boxes are small structures outside the building to be heated that contain the boiler system(s) and the stored fuel. These inconspicuous small enclosures preserve valuable space in the heated building for other uses while housing the whole boiler system just outside.

Maine Energy Systems is building the energy box of material researched and acquired from a Canadian manufacturer by Ben “BJ” Otten (standing in the doorway). That energy box will house two OkoFEN 200,000 BTU pellet boilers and lots of pellet fuel. In fact, there will be enough fuel in the box so that there will only need to be three, or four, deliveries made per year to fire the two-boiler system.

Energy boxes are fabricated at the Bethel facility and equipped with boilers, electrical systems, feed augers, chimneys or power vents, and all necessary piping. They are transported to the installation site by truck, set in place on a prepared concrete slab, attached to power and the heating system of the building and fired up.

As our culture understands the value of this style of heating, these small structures will become common means of heating individual buildings and collections of buildings.

Dutch Dresser is a Director of Maine Energy Systems in Bethel, Maine.

Tags: Energy Box
Posted in Commercial pellet boilers, District heating, Wood pellet boiler | Comments Off

Avoid Inadvertent Decisions

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

I recently watched an institution make a fully mystifying decision to install a large propane boiler despite the fact that propane is the most expensive of the fossil fuels. While some in the institution were anxious to transition the organization’s facilities to renewable resource heating and had a biomass alternative specified for the installation, the decision was fully contrary to that goal.

There was much to learn in this decision. The organization faced three significant complexities:

the basic complexity of the repair or replacement of a large, age-degraded heating system of old, inefficient design;
the decision-making complexity common to organizations overseen by Boards; and,
the complexity of making a wise, long-term decision in a time of substantial energy use transformation.

Arguably, the third complexity above is both the most important one for this, or any, organization to solve and the most difficult to achieve. We are living in a time in which “traditional” energy use has clearly become unsustainable. Bright people around the globe are looking for ways to enable us to maintain, or enhance, our lifestyles while shifting energy sources toward those which can be sustained.

How then did this group of well-educated, thoughtful people make such a curious decision?

The administration of the organization employed a traditional mechanical services firm to advise the decision with the implicit assumption that the firm would manage the selected system going forward. With that choice, the organization eliminated from serious consideration all but the technologies with which the mechanical services firm was familiar and comfortable. All emergent energy sources were eliminated from consideration by that application of administrative information to the complex process.

This sort of “selection information” will serve as a flywheel favoring existing, unsustainable energy use until architectural, engineering, and mechanical contracting firms gain broader understanding of emerging energy technologies and gain comfort in their application.

In the meantime, organizations anxious to make wise long-term decisions about energy use are advised to carefully avoid this “selection information” trap. This is best achieved by employing an advising engineer with a broad understanding of traditional and emergent energy technologies and no vested interest in the organization’s ultimate energy application decision.

Tags: Energy decision-making
Posted in Commercial pellet boilers, Wood pellet boiler | 1 Comment »

Three year heating fuel price freeze!

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

$100+/BARREL OIL? WOOD PELLET HEATING COMPANY GUARANTEES THREE-YEAR FUEL DELIVERY AT EQUIVALENT OF $1.99/GALLON

BETHEL, Me. (Feb. 24, 2011) – Global energy demand, instability in the Middle East and concerns over the strength of the U.S. dollar are combining to send oil prices in one direction: up. Some oil analysts believe home heating oil prices could reach $4.00 or more per gallon in the near future.

Fortunately, Maine and New Hampshire residents and business owners within a 150 road miles of Bethel, in Maine’s Western Mountains, or within 60 road miles of Ashland, Maine, have an alternative: wood pellet fuel, providing heat at a price that’s equivalent to $1.99 per gallon of fuel oil, guaranteed for three years.
That offer is made by Bethel-based Maine Energy Systems, which distributes pellet-fired boilers for homes and commercial spaces. Its new “Northeast Affordable Heat” program, using pellets from four Maine manufacturers (Corinth Wood Pellets, Geneva Wood Fuels, Maine Woods Pellets, and Northeast Pellets), is available to the first 1000 customers who install Maine Energy Systems boilers under the program.

“Pellet heat will be a strong player in Maine’s future,” said Harry “Dutch” Dresser, Managing Director of Maine Energy Systems. “Pellet central heating is as easy and dependable as traditional heating systems, and it uses renewable resources that are plentiful right here in Maine.”

Northeast Affordable Heat guarantees that customers will pay no more than $239 per ton for bulk-delivered pellets through June 30, 2014. There are minimum bulk delivery quantity requirements, and the fuel price guarantee is offered only for use in new installations of Maine Energy Systems equipment. Some other restrictions, which can be found on the Maine Energy Systems website, apply.
“When most people think of pellet heat, they think of stoves and bags of pellets,” said Dresser. “Maine Energy Systems pellet boilers replace oil or gas-fired boilers and tie in with existing forced hot water systems, with significantly lower fuel costs. “

With pellet boiler systems, the fuel is delivered in bulk and feeds into the boiler automatically, just as with an oil-fired system. Maine Energy Systems currently has boiler systems installed in homes, schools, municipal buildings, and substantial commercial buildings.
In addition to reduced fuel costs for consumers, the engineering, fuel production and distribution networks – and the jobs they create – are all located in Maine.

Maine Energy Systems was founded in early 2008 by Les Otten, Dresser and William Strauss.

-maineenergysystems.com-

Tags: alternative energy, Fixed fuel price, home heating, Okofen, pellet boiler
Posted in Bulk pellet distribution, Commercial pellet boilers, Fuel consumption, Pellet burners, Pellet fuel, Wood pellet boiler | Comments Off

Partial Load Heating: big savings opportunity

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Part load Heating: Savings on Capital Investment and on Fuel

Harry “Dutch” Dresser, Managing Director, Maine Energy Systems

Community leaders and business owners in the Northeast regularly confront the question, “Is the time right for me to replace my large fossil fuel heating system with a pellet-fired system for the savings that are available in fuel prices?”

This question is generally followed by a cost-benefit analysis in which the capital investment required includes the full replacement of the oil-based system. When the analysis results in an acceptable payback term for the community, institution, or business, the project is completed. When the fuel cost difference doesn’t lead to a payback period that satisfies the decision-makers, the project is put on hold for another time.

While the question is often considered a simple one with only two possible system configurations, all oil or all renewables, there is a third option that deserves careful consideration when doing a cost-benefit analysis to decide when the time is right for your organization to switch to renewable fuels for all the benefits that entails. A part- load capacity renewable heating system has most of the fuel savings benefits of full system replacement with only 60-70% of the capital costs.

Part-load capacity heating simply means the creation of a hybrid heating system in a building through partial replacement or supplementing of the existing fossil fuel system with a pellet boiler system. To consider part load heating, imagine a commercial building with a peak load demand of 2,000,000 BTU/hour. That means that on the coldest days of the year, the total heating system would be required to provide 2MM BTU/hour to meet the heat needs of the building’s occupants. Therefore, the installed total heating system must be able to provide that amount of heat.

However, in the climates of New York and New England, most of the heating over the course of a year is done at temperatures of 25^oF, or higher, when only 1,000,000 BTU/hour or less would be required to heat the same building. So, if the building were retrofitted with pellet boilers to provide up to1MM BTU/hour and retained oil boilers to provide up to 1MM BTU/hour additional heat during the coldest days of the year, the pellet boilers would provide between 92% and 94% of the heat required for the building over the course of the heating year. The pellet boilers would operate during the entire heating season providing all the heat for the building down to an outdoor temperature of approximately 20^oF. Below 20^oF the pellet boilers would continue to operate at maximum capacity but would the heat would be supplemented by the oil-fired boilers only as necessary to make up the different between the pellet boiler capacity and actual heating load.

In our geographical region, this hypothetical building would have heat provided during 4838 hours (the number of hours/year that outdoor temperature is below 55^oF) over the course of the year providing a total of 3,144 MM BTUs. For most of New England and Upstate New York, there are only about 850 hours during the heating season when the outdoor temperature is below 25^oF.

Assuming comparable efficiencies for large oil boilers and pellet boilers, fuel consumption for those 3,144 MM BTUs would be as follows:

Annual Fuel Consumption for All-pellet or All-oil Boiler Options

Fuel	BTU/unit	BTU demand/yr	Consumption

Pellet	16MM/ton	3,144 MM	245 tons
Oil	138,700/gallon	3,144 MM	28,334 gallons

Pellet only retrofit model

With a retrofit of pellet boilers for the entire heating load, savings would be driven by the difference in cost of energy between pellets and oil. For example, if the difference in price between pellets and oil in fuel cost reduction/gallon equivalents were $1/gallon, the savings realized by a complete conversion from oil to pellets would be $28,334/year (28,334 gallons * $1).

The payback period then, on a full-system replacement would be

capital costs/$28,334

The payback term on a full-system replacement assuming boiler replacement was necessary anyway would be

capital cost, pellet boiler installation – capital cost, oil boiler replacement

$28,334

Hybrid retrofit model

Retrofitting this model building with pellet boiler capacity to handle 50% of the peak demand, or 1,000,000 BTU/hour, while leaving an oil boiler in the system to provide heat when higher demands are present would produce surprising results. Capital savings can be 30-40% over a complete retrofit, but fuel savings do not drop proportionally because in our climate 92-94% of the heat load of the building is provided by the pellet boiler having capacity equal to 50% of the peak heating load of the building. That is, in this example the pellet boilers would provide the vast majority of the heat required for the building over the course of the year. Fuel consumption for this building under each of the three retrofit scenarios in a typical year in the New York/New England region, are represented in the chart below.

Fuel	Total heat load	Oil consumption	Pellet consumption

Oil system	3,144,000,000 BTU	28,334 gallons	0 tons
Pellet system	3,144,000,000 BTU	0 gallons	245 tons
Hybrid system*	3,144,000,000 BTU	2062 gallons	228 tons

*assumes pellet boilers provide 1MM BTU/hour and oil provides 917,000 BTU/hour

With a retrofit of pellet boilers for half of the heat demand (baseload) savings would again be driven largely by the difference in energy cost between pellets and oil. If the difference in price between pellets and oil in fuel cost reduction/gallon equivalents were $1/gallon, the savings realized by a part load conversion from oil to pellets would be $26,272/year, or 92.7% of the savings for 60-70% of the capital investment.

Summary

When considering retrofits of existing oil heated commercial or institutional facilities, decision-makers should carefully consider the hybrid model in which pellet boilers provide 50% of the heat load and an efficient oil boiler provides the additional heat during the very small part of the year when 50% heat load is insufficient. Capital costs for the retrofit are substantially reduced and fuel cost savings are nearly as good as with a full system retrofit.

Posted in Baseload heating, Commercial pellet boilers, Fuel consumption, Partial load heating, Pellet burners, Pellet fuel, Wood pellet boiler | Comments Off