Wood Pellet - Wood Chip Query

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Has anyone any advice for this guy???

glendac has left a new comment on your post "Wood Pellet Prices & SEI Grants Addendum":

My father was advised to install a wood chip burner in his new house. he was advised that it would be economical. he is now using 2 tonne of pelletsa month to heat a 6,000 sq ft house. Common sense would dictate that this cannot be right but the supplier has been out and looked at the product and says it is working perfectly.

Can anyone advise how we can go about trying to prove that we have been duped.




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Tilting at Windmills

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What have Don Qioxote
and
Minister Eamon Ryan
Got in Common??

Am I being too synical in my old age? Every time I hear Miniterial announcements I get a weary feeling of déjá vu. But the spark of hope still burns and I sincerely hope Minister Ryan's announcement of a guaranteed tarrif for windmill electricity will indeed stimulate the desired growth in off-shore wind farms and not simply start another circus like the SEI home grant scheme.



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Ireland's Energy Future?

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Ireland's Preparation
for
the Energy Crisis

The Flood is Coming
Correction
The Dry-Up is Coming

I was thinking about Ireland’s current level of preparations for the looming energy crisis. It struck me that if Noah, while building his ark, had only done the same level of planning as we are presently engaged in, he would have ended up with a bit of a problem on his hands when the flood came.

Government Member Contemplating the Energy Crisis

Are we all just going to sit around contemplating our collective navels while the flood gathers??



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Minister Ryan has a Normal Brain

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Mix-up in X-Rays Clarified
Green Minister Ryan does have
a Normal Brain

Minister Ryan does have a normal sized brain after all. The X-Ray was incorrectly attributed to the Minister. I can fully clarify the matter here and now. You will see from the above photograph that the Minister not only has a good lump of a brain but has even got some bright ideas!!

Hopefully the bright ideas will go a bit further than “ban the bulbs” in addressing Ireland’s woeful energy future. It is NOW, and not in years to come, that we need to be thinking home produced ethanol and bio-diesel, electric cars, massive wind farms, and bio-mass solid fuels etc.

Hopefully more brains, if they exist, in Dail Eireann (the Irish Parliament) will be illuminated.



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Solar Cells reach 42% Efficiency

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SpectroLab achieve 42% efficiency
in PV Solar Cells

SpectroLab Inc., part of the Boeing organisation, have got their "Concentrator Solar Cells" to the amazing level of 42% efficiency. Plus they expect to push that still further in the next couple of years.

This is one of two major field of play in Solar Cell development, "thin flexible film solar cells" being the other. I have covered both in previous posts.


Solid State v/s Mechanical

I believe these are among the most exciting and important segments of sustainable energy technology being developed. Many of the other development involve mechanical devices such as wind turbines etc., and as most of us know, anything with moving parts will inevitably wear-out and cause problems. Whereas with "Solar Cells" because these are "solid state" there is nothing to wear out.

Wind turbines, wave generators, bio-mass driven steam turbines, even geo-thermal, all need an army of maintenace people to keep them running. They are also technically difficult to install, have an impact on the enviornment in terms of looks, noise etc. But with solar cells you have zero noise, little difficulty in installation, and almost zero maintenance.

This is an area to watch.



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Wood Pellet Prices Comment

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BLOG COMMENT

Eoin said...

I'm no expert on pellet stoves but you can get them for a lot cheaper than 330/tonne.

You can get them for 245/tonne here if you order in bulk (3 or 4 tonnes.)
http://www.enerfina.com/enerfina/pages/fpps/

That crowd say that at the moment they only supply Leinster but that in 2008 they will start suplying nationwide.

So maybe it's just your current suppliers are ripping you off ??

8:01 PM

Thank you Eoin for your input to this discussion. You are of course correct in what you say. Balcas, the original Irish supplier, has cheaper bulk prices also. However the cheaper price you quote is, as you say, for 3 to 4 tonne BULK lots of wood pellets. Few users however have the luxury of having bulk storage facilities which are large enough and damp proof enough to take that many loose wood pellets. Wood pellets need absolutely 100% dry conditions - otherwise they turn to sawdust. Proper dry bulk storage would cost another couple of thousand Euro to install and there is no grant for this.

These non-bulk storage customers therefore have to rely on Bagged supplies and are hit with the much much higher prices.

I am glad I decided to hand back my wood pellet grant to SEI because if I was now caught in this trap it would drive me insane!!! I predicted many of these problems that are now coming to light, and I pointed them out to SEI - who of course totally ignored me. SEI in their wisdom decided to stimulate the market by throwing money at it. But they did NOTHING to stop the cowboys and price gougers from preying on the people.

SEI did they even bother to consider the supply situation for wood pellets. Balcas told me SEI did not even take the trouble to contact them on their ability to supply the market at the time when they were the sole supplier.

As you can see, I am not too happy with our tax money being given so freely to SEI!!



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SEI Grants - a Lure and a Snare?

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Come into My Parlour
said the Spider to the Fly!!

Taken from comments:

Eileen said...

I found your site when looking for somebody to repair a Wood Pellet Burner.
It just stopped working on Saturday night so we have no heating and I'm getting nowhere with the company we bought it from in Dublin!
Your question 'do you regret going wood pellet' struck a chord - even though I really love my boiler!!
Eileen, Galway

Well Eileen, some people have suggested that they were lured by the promise of really cheap heating costs into investing in some cases as much as €5000 on top of the SEI grant. Now they feel a bit like the fly in the spiders web - tied down to a difificult and expensive to maintain system and a fuel which is no longer cheap and which at time is very difficult to access.

SEI have done nothing to protect the user from cowboys and price gouging. Whereas they should have guaranteed prices, maintenance and supply - if they really wanted people to turn to the alternatives.


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Wood Pellet Prices & SEI Grants Addendum

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2 Tonnes of Wood Pellets to
1000L of Oil

In case the last post caused any confusion, it takes roughly 2 Tonnes of Wood Pellets to give the same heat as 1000 litres of heating oil. That is where my calculation is derived from.

The cost therefore of 2 tonnes of pellets roughly matched the cost of 1000L of heating oil, or in some cases provides a moderate saving. However, the savings being muted originally by the Wood Pellet Brigade was that it would cost roughly half the price of oil to run a system. This most surely is NOT the case now.



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Wood Pellet Prices and SEI Grants

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A Rant about the SEI Grant and
Current Pellet Prices v/s Oil Prices

Oil prices are down a small bit. At the moment Kerosene is selling at between €650 and €680 per 1000 litres depending on the dealer.

So what do you think is happening with the price of wood pellets????

You got it – they are shadowing oil prices almost to the penny!!! This was not supposed to happen – do you remember? When they sold you that very overpriced pellet boiler, the main selling point was that you would save a fortune on fuel costs – what a load of bollix that has turned out to be!!!

Current Pellet Prices

EcoPellets.ie have reduced their price to €331.55 a tonne from €349 a 5% reduction. Kerry Biofuels have held their price so far.

On the 10th December heating oil was at €680 on the lower end. Now take away 5% and what do you get????? Yep you guessed €649 close enough to €650.

Do you regret going wood-pellet?

Forgive me for being cynical – it’s hard not to be in this instance. SEI grants my arse, what use have these grants been to people in terms of savings or payback??? They have invested a substantial lump sum in heating gear only to be rewarded with no savings or payback on their systems. In fact the pellet systems are likely to run at much higher maintenance costs due to the silly prices being charged for parts.

Do you regret getting your wood pellet system??? I have been hearing reports of endless technical problems with some, and now on top of that, there appears to be price tracking of pellet prices against oil prices. That’s very handy for the dealers with a captive audience which has kindly been provided by the SEI grant scheme.




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Get the Finger Out!!

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Qatar is planning
Either huge Solar or Nuclear plants

Qatar one of the major oil producers is planning either the world's largest solar complex or a dirty great nuclear power plant because they have common sense about total reliance on a fast dwindling world resource. Thankfully, they would appear to be leaning towards the solar option.

Some 3,500 MW (3.5 Giga watts) of solar capacity is in the immediate planning. The longer-term plans are to generate 20% of power from renewable resources by 2036. The solar generation plants will be spread over several sites. Solar capacity could be increased to 4,500MW by 2036. Now these are the guys with the oil - and here are we gobshites, withoput a drop of oil to our names, and we are not up to speed with these guys.

The nuclear and the solar options are two totally separate possible pathways of proceeding and are mutually exclusive. Thankfully the planners seem to be indicating that the solar option is the most likely option to succeed.

Get the Finger Out!!

Here you have a country rich in oil and gas and they are making major plans for alternatives. We in the oil starved West would do well to take notice and get the finger out and start to make realistic plans.


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