Electric boilers

[Gluestick]

Waste sawdust and other by-products are compressed into fuel briquettes. (Some refer to "Eco Logs").

If you can obtain the feedstock for free (or even be paid to cart it away!), then there must be a biomass business opportunity here. Fuel briquettes are being made from all sorts of waste fibre products, both natural and synthetic, and particularly waste products from agricultural processes.

http://www.rwedp.org/fd46ch1.html

Thinks??????????? Wonder if France awards significant grants for the development of eco-friendly new businesses? The EU Social Fund does, more thinks???????????[I]

[Quillan]

Thanks for the link.

I have done some searching and basically I can spend a fortune buying a very large commercial unit or £19.99 on a hand powered thing that uses old newspapers. I already have the latter for junk mail (which is why I like junk mail - Free fuel). I am going to do some more searching tonight but this could be a nice little earner (Rodney).

Seriously if you make the logs then you can burn them on ordinary fires and each one appears to last and hour. The thing I did notice is that the price is quite high in the UK, between £280 and £300 a pallet which is around 67 15kg sacks. I have emailed a company to discover how many cubic metres this equates too.

I'm also going to see my friendly wood yard chap over the next couple of days for a chat about sawdust which might be interesting.

It's all up in the air I know but it's worth a punt as they say. Wouldn't mind some pointers on where to go for a grant.

 

[Gluestick]

Personally, I'd approach this the conventional - boring! - way.

Firstly, look at the competition in France and then look at their prices.

Thereafter, I would evaluate the potential as either a real business opportunity or by investing in a slightly better briquette press, self-sufficiency with a specific payback time for the capital cost. Can't be long if the feedstock is free.

http://www.cfnielsen.com/showintro.asp?menuid=2&ArticleID=108&sprog=uk

EU Grants:  http://www.eugrants.org/

Advice: be patient and persistent as the way the EU lays out grant aid and support is very confusing!

They tend to decide to support a specific cultural, scientific, social etc initiative/s. Green Energy is one.

The EU Social Fund might be the ticket. Some years since I have much to do with this area.

Also, ask a fluent French speaker to surf the Net for french state support: after all France is very keen on green energy and the environment, so there must be something there.

Also, look for any other naturally occuring "Free" fibres, such as straw. Must also be many more from food processing??

I well remember 15 years or so ago when the French government/EU were throwing money at projects which took vineyards out of production. Particularly so in the  Languedoc Roussillon. Foolishly, I passed on an opportunity for a golf course and  cheap funding up to 80% of cost...................[:@]

 

[Chippiepat]

Just a note; mainly for Quillan & Nick,

Was just researching for information on stone walling when somehow or other stumbled into a site thought may be of interest to you, & probably many others, apologise if you are already aware of it.

www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk

Pat 

[oglefakes]

EU Grants:  http://www.eugrants.org/

Advice: be patient and persistent as the way the EU lays out grant aid and support is very confusing!

Ain't that the truth.  [:)]

The site is like something written by 'Bird & Fortune'  Loads of cash, but so complex that no one can actually get any of it [8-)]

[bejay]

[quote user="nicktrollope"]

As I say above, 36Kw supplies are not available, except (I guess) on new bits, close to distribution points/power stations or in cities. Has anyone got one (that is not commercial or a farm)?

& judging by the standing charges, I'm grateful I can't get one!

 

[/quote]

Nor I think will  they ever be available for normal domestic purposes, just too great an increase in peak demand.It raises the interesting point that it will not be possible to heat a larger, not very  well insulated property with directly supplied electricity. even if we could afford to pay the bill.

bj

[Will]

District CHP (combined heat and power) systems using sawmill waste are quite common in Scandinavia, probably on a rather larger scale than you are looking at, but there is serious Euro money for schemes such as that if your commune could be persuaded to look into it - highly unlikely in France. Most such plants serve factories etc but their use for domestic heat and power is growing.

This is an example of a biggish one, just to show that it can be done. One of the big plus points is that surplus power can be sold back to the grid, and because you are generating the power using a renewable biomass fuel, you will get a very good rate for your electricity.

Back to the electric boilers subject, I did see a central heating system in northern France that had an electric boiler, with the boiler combined with a geothermal heat pump taking its heat from underground pipes under the lawn. The owner said it was very economical to run but expensive to install. Running costs were somewhere between a third and a half of the cost of an equivalent kW wet oil system or electric radiators. The actual operating water temperature was lower than with a normal radiator system. This meant that the radiators had to be bigger than normal (underfloor pipes would have been better apparently) and a woodburning insert had to be used for backup heating during really cold weather. But as the radiators are on all the time you gain that way.

[Quillan]

There was a thing on a company that did geothermal heating on BBC2 yesterday lunchtime (Working Lunch I think it's called) . The radiators, the guy said, ran at around 45 deg as did the underfloor heating. So the electric water radiators mentioned before seem to run at about the same temperature as geothermal radiators. The manufacturer of the geothermal system claimed you get 3kw out for every 1kw you put in. Funny but when asked if he had it installed in his own home he replied that he was thinking about it.

[BJSLIV]

Isn't the maximum load issue the reason why people go for individual electric radiators rather than a big electric boiler. Each of the radiators probably consumes a max of 2Kw and the times when they would all be drawing current at the same time can be handled with a delesteur. We can heat our house (175 sq metres0 quite comfortably with a 60amp supply.

If we were starting from scratch a geothermal or reversible air con system would probably make it feasible to manage with a 45 amp supply.

[Will]

Yes, some who plug the geothermal systems reckon on more than 3kW of heat out for 1kW of electrical power in, but that seems to be reckoned to be a fairly realistic figure, and it ties in with what I was told about the above system. To install such a system in an existing building is not something to be undertaken lightly, but in a new build or as part of a major rebuild it is much more realistic.

I have just been reading about a domestic, single-household CHP system that Baxi (which owns Potterton, Ideal Standard and Chapée among others) is trialling at present in Germany. It uses hydrogen fuel cell technology, extracting hydrogen from natural gas, and although the company admits it is currently 'rather expensive' to buy, it is working at getting the cost down and expects to go to market in 2010. It's supposed to be very efficient and low-carbon. It all sounds a bit space-age and pie-in-the-sky to me, but a lot can happen in three years or so.

[Gluestick]

[quote user="oglefakes"]

EU Grants:  http://www.eugrants.org/

Advice: be patient and persistent as the way the EU lays out grant aid and support is very confusing!

Ain't that the truth.  [:)]

The site is like something written by 'Bird & Fortune'  Loads of cash, but so complex that no one can actually get any of it [8-)]


[/quote]

Yes it can be tiresome, as I said. However, the cash is really there and in another incarnation I was involved in helping to spend whole wads of it!

I believe the problem is not the EU's desire to be purposively obscure, rather, they address many nation states with widely differing languages, many of them hugely contextual.

Thereafter natural bureaucracy and the problems with classification into cogent headings come into play: I have never ever see, as yet, any large list or database with multiple fields being easy to search! Try statistics, for example!

With EU grants any subjective item can and does have potentially numerous classifications: e.g. green energy can be scientific, cultural, social, environmental, political, financial, keep on going.

There are organisations promising to cut through the jargon and complexity and obtain grants on one's behalf, I have never seen one work effectively, however and they tend to be very expensive, with no guarantees. Worrying!

 

[oglefakes]

I believe the problem is not the EU's desire to be purposively obscure, rather, they address many nation states with widely differing languages, many of them hugely contextual.

Designed by committee...

Thereafter natural bureaucracy and the problems with classification into cogent headings come into play: I have never ever see, as yet, any large list or database with multiple fields being easy to search! Try statistics, for example!

Designed by committee... plus Sir Appleby

With EU grants any subjective item can and does have potentially numerous classifications: e.g. green energy can be scientific, cultural, social, environmental, political, financial, keep on going.

I'm interested in straw houses and this is exactly how it came across to me, right before I left the site, which I vow to return to [:)]

There are organisations promising to cut through the jargon and complexity and obtain grants on one's behalf, I have never seen one work effectively, however and they tend to be very expensive, with no guarantees. Worrying!

That was my next question, but it isn't any longer [:)]

 

 

 

[bejay]

[quote user="BJSLIV"]

Isn't the maximum load issue the reason why people go for individual electric radiators rather than a big electric boiler. Each of the radiators probably consumes a max of 2Kw and the times when they would all be drawing current at the same time can be handled with a delesteur. We can heat our house (175 sq metres0 quite comfortably with a 60amp supply.

If we were starting from scratch a geothermal or reversible air con system would probably make it feasible to manage with a 45 amp supply.

[/quote]

Yes of course. The French have trained themselves to manage for several generations with  what in reality is a pretty lightweight supply system. compared with the general capacity of the UK network. I hope they don't blow it.

bj

[Pam]

In the process of buying an apartment (about 80m2) which has NO plumbing at all - so we have complete free choice on central heating.  We are thinking of going all electric and are considering electric radiators.  Can anyone give us wise words? 

Can they be wired in with a timer system like I'm used to in England for my central heating?  Do they have individual thermostats, or room ones?

Been looking at LeRoy Merlin's manual and am a little confused by the range of elec radiators available, and associated costs.  How do we choose, is 'more money' = 'better'?

Can a competent DIY electrician set them up?

Pam   (Near Bordeaux so no real sub-zero temperatures)