CHP mis-sold / breach of contract

Morning all,

Looking for some advice please on where we go from here with our CHP project.

We installed 2 units last year and the whole thing has just been a total pain in the ass. Looking for some advice on what we can do going forward if possible. There are a number of different angles and complaints I have which I'll try to explain.

1. The machines are overly temperamental and we have had some months incurring up to 300 shut downs. Also a health hazard leaking CO gas and horrible ash everywhere. After being sold them on an hr or 2 checks a day will suffice, to the reality of its 2 of us nearly full time working on them.

2. The installers who we signed a service contract with have been servicing the units, despite being approved by the manufacturer, have had no formal training and basically had no idea what they are doing and haven't been doing it correctly. Probably causing half the issues above. After the first year they have replaced so many parts and consumables they say they wont be servicing them anymore unless we sign again at a much higher rate.

3. Quoted generation and power figures are all off. Theres 3 stages to this. Firstly between 2 units we are meant to generate 100kwe. However, our installer never took the parasitic load out of the calculations of what will be going through the meter. I know for a fact other sellers/installers did take this load out of calculations. This equates to about 8% down on electric generation. Manufacturer has confirmed this is the case.

The reformer heat is meant to be 24kwt, which is subtracted from our meters to give us eligible heat. This sits more between 25-29kwt.

Have also been told that the engine intercooler is pulling away another 7kwt before metering.

We were sold as 85kw usable heat, when I have had confirmation from manufacturers it should in fact be 72kw usable.

Installers are claiming that the manufacturers provided them with incorrect figures to start with. This may be true with the heat, but it is definitely their mistake with the pload.

4. Parts/Warranty

In December we were told we need to start fitting protective steel crowns in the reformer to stop reformer cracking. Unfortunately we think the reformers cracked before this and have had them replaced. We are still using the crowns but are changing them every 400 hrs due to warping. They are replacing them at the moment under warranty but this is going to be another 13k a year at least on parts just for the crowns.
We have probably replaced 50k worth of bits in the first year.
We were sold the machines on the fact that it would cost us £23k for all servicing maintenance and consumables. After this first year theyve turned round said its not feasible and now only offer a labour only service with an astronomical hourly rate.


Now that our first year is up and we're out of service contract, all prices for work has shot through the roof, noone telling us where we stand on warranty or who will deal with it.

Can anyone tell me what my options are going forward? Want to get in front of a solicitor or expert who knows what they are talking about. Any recommendations?

I would like to know who exactly is liable for what, and whether weve pee'd 3/4 mil up the wall or if we can get any recompense.

Cheers!
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
Awful lot of cowboys in CHP and I fear your 3/4 mil may have been pee'd up the wall. Unfortunately you wont be the last and to be honest your only a drop in the ocean compared to some I know who have written off over 5 million on systems that they where advised would not work but they knew better and believed the salesman.
 

renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
So does it sound like it's worth perusing legal recourse or do these cases never seem to get anywhere?

Depends who your up against. Typically foreign manufacturer UK agent. Your contract with UK agent who becomes fall guy into receivership and manufacturer appoints new UK agent. Had this with an Italian wood pellet manufacturer with UK agent no longer selling the equipment and new agent appointed. In my case not worth the expense of litigation.
 
Yeah thats right, foreign manufacturer, UK based dealer for them, and then another UK based installer who bought the units from the UK dealer as far as I can tell.

Problem is they are all desperate to pass the blame between each other and nothing ever gets sorted.
 

f0ster

Member
your contract is with the company you bought the system off, if it is in Scotland make sure you get a Scottish law firm, it will be worth spending a few hundred getting specialist legal advice, what make of CHP?
 
Yeah thats right, foreign manufacturer, UK based dealer for them, and then another UK based installer who bought the units from the UK dealer as far as I can tell.

Problem is they are all desperate to pass the blame between each other and nothing ever gets sorted.
First job is to know if company you bought it off is still trading and whether youthink they will continue to do so.
 

Fowler VF

Member
Location
Herefordshire
I have posted before about the fact that CHP was never going to be a "plug and play" system. It does require a fair degree of in house knowledge and definitely needs enthusiasm to make it work.

My position is that I have been involved in engineering and renewables most of my life, I brought the fist Spanner units into the UK and was the first Ofgem registered ROC and RHI set-up to actually work and get payments. Without blowing trumpets too much you can imagine that there isn't a lot I don't know about the subject of gasification CHPs of all types. The OP's unit is not a Spanner; I know Spanner units extremely well but all the other makes use the same principles. The OP knows exactly who I am and has previously had an offer of a visit here and a few hours of my time for free, he is only a few miles from me but has never taken up the offer. Not running the guy down, but if the problem is really that bad you'd have thought that a couple of hours spent with me and my team learning about how to run it and get the best out of it would have been worthwhile. To be clear; I am not an installer or supplier of any make of CHP, I know who his installer probably is but that is the limit of my connection. I have done some UK work for Spanner, because they appear to recognise my knowledge base but most of my work is consultancy on other larger scale projects.

One of the issues here, and its common to all CHP's, is that they were developed in Europe and geared to that market. Support systems are different there; for example, heat production (particularly in Germany) is not what is paid for, so the manufacturers haven't paid much attention to that. The UK market was always going to be very small, the degression of RHI tariffs choked off the uptake virtually as soon as it began. A lot of European manufacturers didn't grasp this and began selling into the UK thinking it would be a longer term market. Now that all new sales have virtually stopped they are faced with supporting a very small number of machines and I guess it isn't cost effective. Spanner always knew all of this, never even offered any UK support, just discounted the price and tried to sell only directly to end users that could to a large extent be self sufficient and self supporting.

I have said to a number of CHP users that appear to be unhappy with their systems that I am giving serious consideration to putting together a package to offer to buy these "distressed" RHI registered plants off them!
 
Yeah the company is still trading.

Fowler, yes I do really appreciate your past offer to come and have a look at everything down there but simply just not had the chance yet. Bit of a harsh comment though, I know you know your stuff incredibly well and it is on the list to do. Without being rude I don't see what could help with some of these issues.

I understand the principles of the units. We NEVER thought these machines would be plug and play, 1 hr a day like they claimed originally. More than happy to put the work in to get them going. However 2 of us near full time is ridiculous.

As I said my issues are mostly the generation figures being wrong that it was sold on and suddenly having to spend 13-14k a year on protective crowns in the reformer BEFORE taking into account other parts after warranty ends.

Majority of the problems were down to weak servicing, we have since taken this on ourselves instead and having a much better time immediately. Theres no way they were doing a proper job on it if 2 of us spent a good 10 hours on it the one day, when they were finishing it with 1 in 6 or 7 hrs.

I am confident in our skills to maintain the machines ourselves to a much higher standard, I just want them to do what we were told they would and not have to spend a disgusting amount on parts that I dont think are fit for the job.
 
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We financed entirely through the bank. That was one avenue I was going to look at. The great thing about all this was, for their due diligence, all they ended up doing was emailing the installer and asking them!

The manufacturers have deep pockets, I dont know about the company we bought them from.
 

Gramman

Member
CHP was always known that it was going to nee a pain in the rear but people saw the £££££'s. You probably will need to employ someone to monitor and operate and clean them daily it's not a fit and forget solution, some have fuel and moisture content and quality issues. Spanners seen to be pretty robust but ESPE seem to be nothing but bother. Glad we never got involved in fitting them.
 
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Like I said, looking for advice on what I can do about mis sold figures and performance, and the fact they are probably going to cost about 70k plus a year to service them at the recent prices I've been quoted including the consumables and parts. And thats before anything else breaks. We were sold them on the basis that it would cost low 20s for maintenance and parts.

Doing it ourselves and sourcing own parts will save massively on those figures but replacing a lot of these bits every 400hrs soon adds up still.

What do people normally ask for in this case, is it a case of pack it all up and take it away, or being put back in the original position the contract states, or just a waste of time buckle down and grind on with it.
 
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Petergartmore

New Member
Morning all,

Looking for some advice please on where we go from here with our CHP project.

We installed 2 units last year and the whole thing has just been a total pain in the ass. Looking for some advice on what we can do going forward if possible. There are a number of different angles and complaints I have which I'll try to explain.

1. The machines are overly temperamental and we have had some months incurring up to 300 shut downs. Also a health hazard leaking CO gas and horrible ash everywhere. After being sold them on an hr or 2 checks a day will suffice, to the reality of its 2 of us nearly full time working on them.

2. The installers who we signed a service contract with have been servicing the units, despite being approved by the manufacturer, have had no formal training and basically had no idea what they are doing and haven't been doing it correctly. Probably causing half the issues above. After the first year they have replaced so many parts and consumables they say they wont be servicing them anymore unless we sign again at a much higher rate.

3. Quoted generation and power figures are all off. Theres 3 stages to this. Firstly between 2 units we are meant to generate 100kwe. However, our installer never took the parasitic load out of the calculations of what will be going through the meter. I know for a fact other sellers/installers did take this load out of calculations. This equates to about 8% down on electric generation. Manufacturer has confirmed this is the case.

The reformer heat is meant to be 24kwt, which is subtracted from our meters to give us eligible heat. This sits more between 25-29kwt.

Have also been told that the engine intercooler is pulling away another 7kwt before metering.

We were sold as 85kw usable heat, when I have had confirmation from manufacturers it should in fact be 72kw usable.

Installers are claiming that the manufacturers provided them with incorrect figures to start with. This may be true with the heat, but it is definitely their mistake with the pload.

4. Parts/Warranty

In December we were told we need to start fitting protective steel crowns in the reformer to stop reformer cracking. Unfortunately we think the reformers cracked before this and have had them replaced. We are still using the crowns but are changing them every 400 hrs due to warping. They are replacing them at the moment under warranty but this is going to be another 13k a year at least on parts just for the crowns.
We have probably replaced 50k worth of bits in the first year.
We were sold the machines on the fact that it would cost us £23k for all servicing maintenance and consumables. After this first year theyve turned round said its not feasible and now only offer a labour only service with an astronomical hourly rate.


Now that our first year is up and we're out of service contract, all prices for work has shot through the roof, noone telling us where we stand on warranty or who will deal with it.

Can anyone tell me what my options are going forward? Want to get in front of a solicitor or expert who knows what they are talking about. Any recommendations?

I would like to know who exactly is liable for what, and whether weve pee'd 3/4 mil up the wall or if we can get any recompense.

Cheers!
 

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