Biomass boiler delivery to the Bay
Phil Rawiri directs crane driver Lindsay Hill during the installation of the biomass-burning boiler last Monday. Photo: Neil Wilson.
High tech, environmentally-friendly heating will make its presence felt in Golden Bay this winter.
Last Monday, Golden Bay High School took delivery of its brand new 350kW biomass-burning boiler to replace its old coal-fired model.
The new heating system will burn about 100 tonnes of chipped timber each winter instead of the usual 40 tonnes of coal that the school used to burn. The boiler was supplied by Living Energy, the company that won the contracts for six of the seven schools selected to join the biomass pilot scheme. The company was well represented at last week’s installation.
“We’ve got plenty of expertise here, basically our whole team,” said Living Energy’s sector development manager, Neil Harrison.
The new boiler system is manufactured by Binder and Company of Austria. “They’ve been doing this for about 30 years and they’re industry leaders in Europe,” said Neil. “Not everyone knows that about 50% of the renewable energy being generated in Europe comes from wood.
“There are huge advantages to Golden Bay High School in being included in this pilot scheme. We’d like to see other boilers being replaced with this technology too. The coal doesn’t have to be trucked in and it doesn’t get burned like it used to. That’s a lot of smoke that doesn’t hang over the school. On top of that, the woodchip burned in this system produces almost no emissions – a bit of steam and a heat haze - and the ash that’s left over can be put on the garden. The system’s about 93% efficient on dry wood. This environmentally-friendly technology delivers almost all the heat to the cleverly-designed heating pipes and everything is really well insulated so there’s almost no waste.”
Living Energy is responsible for negotiating the contratcs for supplying the biomass for the boiler.
“The optimum size timber is 10-20cm in diameter. That’s the thin stuff at the top of millable logs. Sometimes that stuff just gets left in the forest or it goes out of the district. Our systems basically underpin existing forestry.”
Neil said that the biomass boiler would also have the effect of leaving money in the local economy.
“Every time the coal truck left, it was full of money,” he said.
Lindsay Hill drove Waitapu Engineering’s crane that lifted the hefty components of the boiler over the power lines into the school’s adapted boiler-house.
Neil Wilson
