NEW REVIEW The Quarterly Newsletter for the UK New and Renewable Energy Industry ISSUE 43 February 2000

New biomass plant at Boughton pumping station

Rural Generation Ltd, the firm that developed the UK's first on-farm CHP biomass-fuelled plant in Londonderry, now has a second full-scale plant operating at Boughton Pumping Station in Nottinghamshire. Rated at 100kW_e and 180kW_th, it uses a six-cylinder dual-fuel Iveco engine running on 80% wood and 20% diesel; eventually it will run on 90% wood and 10% diesel.

Located at Ollerton, the building for which the CHP unit is producing heat and electricity is an old pumping station, built in 1905 by the Corporation of Nottingham to supply water to the city. More recently, it was owned by Severn Trent Water. In 1995, Boughton Pumping Station Partnership Trust was set up, bought the old building for £1 and won one of six UK Rural Development Commission challenge awards. The first phase of development, completed in 1996, created six lettable working spaces for local firms. The second phase was finished a year later, adding 16 units of high-tech office space, a licensed restaurant and a conference centre. The new CHP plant came on-line in May 1999. The project has raised funds from various sources; Ollerton is an ex-mining area and qualifies for different kinds of Government assistance.

The CHP plant uses wood by-products from local forests, eg thinnings, off-cuts and woody residues. It needs about 1 tonne/day of fuel which comes from a 5-mile radius. A future plan is to use locally-grown short-rotation coppice wood; there will be a need for some 100 acres of coppice on local farms.

The unit produces 98kW/hour and any surplus power is sold to East Midlands Electricity for distribution as "green electricity". The ex-works price for the CHP plant, including the gasifier, gas clean-up system, engine, generator and heat recovery unit, was about £90,000. Boughton Pumping Station Partnership Trust does not yet classify the project as a "commercial" example of the technology. Before this claim can be made, at least 6000 running hours are needed, which will be achieved this year.

For more information contact: Simon Hartley, Boughton Pumping Station Partnership Trust, Tel: 01623 862366, Fax: 01623 863080.

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