Even with the gradual drop in RHI tariffs and low fossil fuel prices we are still seeing fantastic returns on commercial biomass boilers, especially in the medium band, from 200 Kilowatts up to a Megawatt. The small tariff, up to 199 Kilowatt, is also showing good returns, still.
Too often I am talking to others in the biomass industry who are bemoaning the drop-off in demand and selling the boilers short. The problem is that we were spoilt in the early days, when the tariff was ridiculously high and so were the fuel prices. It was crazy busy. Now the tariff has dropped by 50% and so have the fossil fuel prices, but the tariff is arguably where it should have been to start with, and the fossil fuel price is already bouncing back. Last time I looked, a barrel of crude was $45 from a recent low of $25. The chancellor is rumoured to be putting up fuel duty soon, which may extend to heating oil — it’s currently at the lowered rate of 5%, down from 20%, so with it nice and low at the moment it’s a good time to get it back to 20% VAT, which will then fill the government’s coffer exponentially as the prices rise back up to what they were eighteen months ago.
Things are actually better now than they were back then:
- We were too busy as an industry, with bad installers jumping on the bandwagon to satisfy demand
- Public awareness of RHI was low
- So low that most people didn’t believe us when we told them the returns
- People were buying, selling, getting biomass boilers for all the wrong reasons and abusing the system
- Now everything has calmed down, the rogues have fallen by the wayside, the figures are more reasonable
Hack 350 Commercial Biomass Boiler
Look at this beauty. We have just finished installing an ETA Hack 350 biomass boiler at a commercial plant nursery near Honiton in Devon. The owners say they wish they had done it years ago. We’ve put them in a fantastic heating system, with big fan coil heaters in the glasshouses that keep the temperatures up, get a good circulation of air around the plants, and with the current level of RHI and our unbeatable prices the system will pay for itself in under five years in RHI alone.
The client was always afraid to turn on his oil-fired warm air blowers — they were always going wrong and rotting out with rust, and they cost a fortune in oil to run.
He’s not afraid to run the biomass boiler heating system.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]