BETHEL, ME: Maine Energy Systems (MESys) has recently been awarded a grant worth $806,598 from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER). MESys intends to use the grant to develop a bulk wood pellet distribution facility and provision a fully-automated wood pellet boiler showroom and warehouse in Oxford, Massachusetts. The grant will allow MESys, that operates a similar pellet distribution hub out of its headquarters in Bethel, Maine, to operate a 16 ton fully-pneumatic bulk pellet delivery truck for a broad radius around the Oxford facility.
“Increasing fossil fuel costs and growing consumer awareness of fully-automated wood pellet boilers contributed to our decision to expand our fuel distribution network,” said co-founder and CEO Les Otten. “Pellets delivered in bulk are bagless and are blown into a specially designed storage units, similar to an oil or propane delivery.”
The planned showroom will feature regionally manufactured MESys AutoPellet boilers. The AutoPellet is a standalone system and can be sized to meet the heat and domestic hot water demands of households, businesses, institutions and municipal buildings.
Unlike a wood pellet stove, AutoPellet boilers are an automatically-fed central heating system and require no human interaction to operate.
According to Otten, “at today’s prices, a home burning 1,000 gallons of oil will spend between $3,500 – $4,000 on fuel annually. By switching to an AutoPellet boiler, heating with pellets would cost just under $2,000”.
