Froling Energy will be exhibiting at Greenerborough in the Town House, and will also be offering tours of their newly installed pellet furnace which provides heat for the Town House. Put this on your Greenerborough agenda!
FACTS about the Peterborough Town House pellet boiler system:
• The two new OkoFEN boilers are each rated at 191,000 BTU per hour, so the total maximum output is 382,000 BTU per hour (one of these is also installed at the Peterborough Police Department)
• OkoFEN boilers are manufactured in Lembach, Austria by OkeFEN Eco Engineering GmbH
• Having 2 boilers makes the system more efficient because it can be more responsive to the heat load. Heat can be provided by one or two systems together, depending on real time demands.
• A 400 gallon buffer tank that we installed into the heating loop assures the system of quick response to changes in the heat load as well as clean performance due to reducing the on/off cycling of the boilers by more than 50%
• A pellet storage bin with 30 ton capacity was built into the town house, under the stage in the auditorium.
• Pellets are “blown” into the storage bin delivered by a bulk storage truck via 3 pipes that were installed at the rear of the Town House.
• Pellet level can be seen through some viewing ports or “sight glasses” in the wall of the meeting room that is also under the stage.
Here’s all we know about the PERFORMANCE of the Town House pellet boilers:
• First of all they have been providing 99.9% of all required heating from December 1st to today (4.5 months). The usual heating season is October 1 through May 1. Virtually no oil was burned since December 1, 2011.
• In November 2011, $5200 was spent on 26 tons of pellets blown into the interior silo ($200/ton). Since no other pellets were delivered and the pellet bin is empty, we know exactly what was burned during the 4.5 month period.
• Extrapolating for the heat load from October 1 through Nov 31, and from April 14 through May 1 (+10%) and adjusting for the warmer winter (+20%) we figure that in an average annual heating season this system would have used 33.5 tons. At $200/ton that would cost $6,700
• In past years, the old oil boilers burned 7,200 gallons in an average annual heating season. At $3.25/gallon that would have cost the town $25,200.
• Savings by changing to wood pellets from oil are estimated to be an average of $18,500 per year.
• Installed cost (not including any grants or credits) of the pellet boiler system with silo and all components was $138,000.
• Return on Investment would be 13.4%
• Direct payback = 7.3 years, providing that all fuel costs remain the same, relatively
• By switching from oil to pellets have reduced CO2 emissions by 96.8%. By not burning 7200 of oil gallons a year in the Town House, and switching to wood pellets, the building’s carbon footprint was reduced by over 90 tons per year.
During the installation of the new pellet boilers, a number of steps were taken to conserve energy within the boiler room.
• Pipe insulation on all exposed heat pipes in the basement
• Variable speed distribution pumps
• Outdoor sensor for varying boiler according to output temperature
