Hello,
would the pellet burning visitors to the site comment on being quoted £12000 for a 23kw pellet boiler? Austrian manufactured and sounds very good but seems very expensive compared to other suppliers? Are some makes just over priced due to the green energy tag? I have looked at some different makes from eastern european countries for about £4-5000? How can I find out if the boiler I choose will qualify for the RHI? Do you simply get what you pay for? The sales guy made a very big deal that their boilers qualified for the RHI but surely others do for less than £12000? Many thanks.

I cant remember exactly how it was spelt but it was Guntamatic I think?

Well the 12000 was just for for the boiler,no auger or pellet store etc? The system has a small hopper on the boiler itself. So in your opinion the price seems fairly realistic? That is a shame as it may put me off installing one?
Do you know anything about cheaper boilers?
Cheers.

It is at the moment.

Why dont you have a look at the windhager biowin (21 & 26kW versions) - the one I installed cost £7k for the boiler alone 2 years ago.
Prices have gone up a lot due to the exchange rate since then.

Also dont forget the Heat Incentive scheme will give you a significant return over time.
There is also a £1500 grant available at the moment towards the cost.

As per your post except it will not be metered, it will be deemed by your installer, corroborated by a second MCS registered installer. So your tariff payment will depend not on how many kg of pellet you burn, but on how many Kwh of heating and DHW your house is deemed to need. For 15 years, index linked. Beware tho.the tariff has not been agreed. it is out to consultation at the moment.

Thanks for the advice. So if you DIY some of the installation can the system still qualify for the RHI? Also does anyone know when the consultation period is over and we will know the facts? Is there a chance more boilers will be added to the list?
Thanks again.

Gustyturbine -sorry I forgot to comment on the "DIY part "of your post. With hindsight, looking back at the installation of my own wood pellet system, there are definitely bits that I could have done which could have shaved off some of the cost and which, in my opinion, with the cooperation of the installer, would not have any impact on the certification of the system. I am thinking of the positioning of the 3 ton capacity pellet store and the auger feed mechanism and the long copper pipe runs from the garage (where the pellet fired boiler is situated) up to the loft and along and then down again to the thermal store which is in the middle of the house on the ground floor. These elements were quite labour intensive. I guess you would need to have a good cooperation with your installer otherwise they might want to do the whole job or nothing at all.

Be careful of any relevant date before which the installation would not qualify for the RHI,
e.g. if you install in June this year and then they say that only installations after July will qualify - this is what happened with the FIT for wind turbines and PV.

I have an Angus Super Wood Log Gasification Boiler and i know that the list of MCS approved installers should increase rapidly over the next 12 months. As i understand from Eco Angus the RHI consultation document has put an emphasis on the product suppler and installers to gain MCS accreditation. As the grant scheme will be 9.0p per kWH up to 45kW and 6.5p per kWH for above 45kW prospective customers are only going to look at MCS accredited products/installers. With the original MCS under the DECC the grant was £1500 as a one off payment whereas now it will be typically £1200 per year for 15 years. Under the MCS it never really got off the ground.
If you check the MCS installers list currently there are only 61 on biomass boilers for the whole of the UK.
Things will change in the next 12 months and the lists should get longer as long as the consultation document becomes reality.
Hope that helps.

Hi Folks,

I better introduce myself first. I am Gideon Richards, one of the Mags Insiders and among other things am the chair of the MCS Steering Group. Can I make some comments on the debate and more generally, please.

MCS is expanding rapidly, with more products going on the list, either through the transition arrangements, or as certified products regularly. There are approx. 115 biomass products on the list at present, of various sizes and fuel inputs types and I expect more to be included soon.

gustyturbine, you may wis to ask Guntamatic if they are going through the Certification process or have aplied for transition!

jcsewart, I think you meant to say "With the original LCBP under DECC the grant..." It is important to understand that MCS is a voluntary Quality Assurance Scheme and not a grant programme.

A few comments on RHI as I understand them, and remebering that this is still a consultation, which ends 26th. April, 2010.

The 9p/kWh is for deemed systems up to 45kW and the deeming will be based on average kWh values for either cavity wall insulated properties or solid wall properties (Table 1 Annex 2 illustrates this quite well).

Any project installed after 15th. July, 2009 and RHI eligible will recieve RHI (see transitional arrangements page 46).

As I understand the RHI, DIY installs will not be eligble. As the MCS Certificated Installer will be supplying the Commissioning documents for the installed system, I would have very careful conversations with them about doing bits of the project yourself. At the moment it is likely that the MCS installer company will issue the customer with a certificate that can be used to inform ofgem that the installation is genuine, where it is and what the system is. This will be the important document to enable you to get your RHI registered system.

Hope that all helps.

Gideon

Owlman,

Sorry the only 2 acronyms new are LCBP - Low Carbon Building Programme and DECC - Dept. of Energy and Climate Chage.

In terms of fees - they are split into two elements. The MCS fees for manufacturers are published on the website, but are £350.00 for the first technology certified an additional £250.00 for the second, £175.00 for the 3rd and £100.00 for the 4th. Installer companies pay £100.00 per year plus £5.00 for each installer system.

The Certification Bodies charge on a commercial fee and have published their fee strutures on their websites, however, they are starting at £650.00 for the first year for installers. The fees will be very dependant on what product processes you have already and the position the product is in in relationship to its market readiness. I'm sorry that may sound a bit loose, however, some companies with the systems in place have managed to get through the system without too much fuss (big and small companies), others have found it a little more onerous. However, it has put the businesses in a strong position to manage their quality and business processes.

Hope that helps.

Gideon

Gideon, thanks for your comments. You say: "The 9p/kWh is for deemed systems up to 45kW and the deeming will be based on average kWh values for either cavity wall insulated properties or solid wall properties (Table 1 Annex 2 illustrates this quite well)."
Will these average values assume that a house is heated to the ridiculous industry standard temperature of 21 degrees Centigrade for six months of the year?
It looks as if the Government will give me a grant and an RHI payment for installing a complex imported biomass boiler with lots of moving parts and electrical loads and encourage me to burn heaps of biomass to maintain a large old solid-walled house at 21 degrees. If I have lots of money I can do this and collect the RHI or I could even install the kit but live frugally in one room (or go on an extended holiday in the depths of winter) and pocket the RHI deemed to be due to me even though I will have used hardly any fuel. Can it be sensible to encourage people to install as powerful a biomass boiler as possible rather than reward super energy efficiency and frugality? At the very least surely we need to be challenging the 21 degree default?

Owlman - There are a number of points you raise, which need to be addressed. CE marking demonstrates that a product meets the requirements of certasin directives and where they are integrated the underlying standards. The CE mark, as I understand it, is for the first one produced. What it doesn't do is provide assurance that all the products produced are equivalent in quality and performance to the first one that is cetified. MCS takes the certified product evidence and then check (through one or more routes that the products conform to the that specified). This is called Factory Production Control (FPC). Think of it this way - if I were to tell you you are buying the best electric car in the world and all the initial certificates agreed with that and then I started to put in inferior components to reduce my costs and those components failed to give the mileage you had been lead to believe you were going to get, or it started to fail just outside the warranty period, you would be rightly upset. MCS assures that the products do what they say they do on the tin. If modifications are made to the product that materially affect its performance or quality, the manufacturer will have to discuss with their certifying body the impact of those changes, which may be accepted without retesting or may need testing to check the claims are still valid. It may sound complex, however, most manufacturers go through this process in one form or another anyway. MCS just formalises it.

What you have to remember and I did say it before, but it is worth saying again, is that we are not asking for duplication of evidence, where evidence of compliance is available that will be reviewed and accepted or not dependant on what it is. Therefore allegations of MCS requiring huge costs for compliance, is often mixed up with the requirements to demonstrate that the data begin provided in the first place is accurate, i.e. certificates.

Rosemary - If you feel strongly about the RHI consultation I suggest you download it and respond. Please remember though that the Deeming process is being offered to reduce the burden and hence cost to the end-user. The deemed values will have been calculated to get to the same results as a typical house (whether the calculation is correct or not is a different point). The way all this has been designed is to stimulate Renewable Energy Growth for what you use. The MCS supports this by ensuring that systems are sized in relation to the property when the company quotes for the job.

Your comments about installing big boilers is mis-guided as the effect of over sizing a biomass boiler is to make it more inefficient and also cause the user more problems with the likes of clinkering (which is a symptom of poor combustion). As for lower than 21degrees, I absolutely agree!

Regards Gideon

Thanks again Gideon. My point was that a default of 21 degrees C requires a larger boiler than one of 18 degrees and the RHI thinking seems to encourage the choice of the larger boiler and therefore the burning of more biomass. The case I have in mind should be ideal for biomass with a possible £4000 grant (this is Scotland), boiler scrappage and a likely RHI of 9p per unit. And yet bringing gas to the property (perhaps £10,000 and no grant and no RHI) still looks preferable and likely to result in a greater tendency to be frugal. I wish it were not so.

Thanks Jeff B. Haven't come across that one but 21 degrees default requires a 40kW boiler for large old solid walled house but by lowering the default 30kW could be OK. I can't resolve the pellet storage and delivery problem and worry about them absorbing moisture in the very damp climate. I've also been told that pellets have a "use by" date (because of the moisture problem) which doesn't sound compatible with attempts to conserve fuel for as long as possible. Am I being too neurotic?