As the price of oil, gas and electricity continues to rise at an alarming rate, home and business owners are looking for practical accessible alternatives to heat their homes and business premises.
A typical house that currently burns about 2,000 to 3,000 litres of oil per year will have recovered the cost of installing a wood pellet boiler in about four to six years. With the wood gasification boiler payback could be as quick as three to four years.
In monetary terms, a home that makes the switch could save €1,200 in the first year or more than €40,000 over the first 10 years by installing high quality wood burning boiler systems.
The same home that switched to burning wood logs could save as much at €2,800 in the first year or more than €90,000 over the first 10 years by installing high quality wood burning boiler systems.
These figures assume that oil, wood pellets and wood logs all rise in price by 20 per cent per year.
So what is a wood gasification boiler? The fuel for wood pellet and wood chip boilers is to one extent or another, processed fuel (eg, drying, chipping and pelletizing ) which contributes to end cost.
Wood logs, however, are a much rawer fuel and therefore will cost even less to purchase.
New grants are also available for wood log gasification boilers, as announced by the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Eamon Ryan TD earlier this month.
Under previous phases of this scheme, only wood pellet and wood chip boilers have received grant assistance. These boilers will continue (for the moment at least ) to receive grant aiding to the amount of €2,500, while the new grant for wood gasification boilers is €2,000.
Elementary Energy offers wood chip boiler systems as well as solar heating systems, and heat recovery ventilation systems
For information contact Mike O’Rourke, Elementary Energy on [email protected], ring 093-32843 or visit www.ElementaryEnergy.ie
