Biogas at Wighton

Exfarmer

Member
Location
Bury St Edmunds
After the FIT and RHI, I think we will probably run with a smaller CHP, basically supplying our own needs of electricity and heat, and running mainly off slurry. The business of non-FIT grid generation is not a goer. Still, what will happen to the electricity market in the next 10 years??

Looking at the yield of solar in terms of GWh/hectare, it is far better than pure electrical generation from AD, and even including batteries for night time export probably cheaper than AD. I think the future of AD is to utilise waste only, no crops grown specially, and to utilise heat as much as possible.
thanks for a very honest answer. Of course if you can rack up the power usage, which would treble the value of the exported power it could make a serious difference to the calculations.
Is there any possibility of having a set up to export electricity only at peak times? I know it is quite a local thing but certainly on one of my sites the exported power is worth more than double at peak times of day. Sadly being Solar we can take little advantage of it unless we fitted large batteries, but I am not convinced the life of these will pay for the installation.
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
thanks for a very honest answer. Of course if you can rack up the power usage, which would treble the value of the exported power it could make a serious difference to the calculations.
Is there any possibility of having a set up to export electricity only at peak times? I know it is quite a local thing but certainly on one of my sites the exported power is worth more than double at peak times of day. Sadly being Solar we can take little advantage of it unless we fitted large batteries, but I am not convinced the life of these will pay for the installation.
Generation for export at peak prices is a possibility, it would need a bigger gasholder than we have (350 m3) which will run the CHP for 3 hours. If you can negotiate the right price for peak lopping, batteries can be viable. I understand the South Australia Tesla installation has a payback of just over a year. I also heard on BBC In Business last week that if it were not for battery storage, last summer's big outage would have been a whole lot bigger.
 

The Son

Member
Location
Herefordshire
How have you managed to get RHI on your plant, I commissioned in August 2013 and have been unable to get it.

It is really interesting how you have had to overhaul your control system, this is the one thing that worries me about my plant more than any other. We run a Scada system which seems pretty universal, but PlanET hold the access codes so only they can get in and maintain and alter anything, this has to be done from Germany. Unfortunately they are not the best, communication is an issue and they don't seem to be interested in updates. My current system runs on windows 7, so obviously now has a shelf life. My PLC had to be replaced in the summer, which shut me out of all the systems for a few days so I was running blind, not a nice feeling!
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
How have you managed to get RHI on your plant, I commissioned in August 2013 and have been unable to get it.

It is really interesting how you have had to overhaul your control system, this is the one thing that worries me about my plant more than any other. We run a Scada system which seems pretty universal, but PlanET hold the access codes so only they can get in and maintain and alter anything, this has to be done from Germany. Unfortunately they are not the best, communication is an issue and they don't seem to be interested in updates. My current system runs on windows 7, so obviously now has a shelf life. My PLC had to be replaced in the summer, which shut me out of all the systems for a few days so I was running blind, not a nice feeling!
I think we were the first RHI thermal application for biogas CHP to be approved, when the limit was 200 kW thermal maximum. We have had to jump through numerous hoops, the first being an inspection by the top people from consultants at Harwell. After approving our installation, they then took against our heat meter installations and we had to change them all.

I would not be happy with a SCADA which I could not modify or update. The HMI on the CHP has level 3 access locked to the manufacturers, but we have level 2 access and can change pretty much anything we might want to.

What make of PLC are you using? Did it just fail, or did you have a lightning surge or something similar? I am wondering whether to keep a spare unit in stock, as it is a critical component.
 

The Son

Member
Location
Herefordshire
Thats great that you got RHI, its always been an annoyance to me as I use as much heat as I can in our poultry unit, so it displaces all the gas that would be used, rather than just aimlessly drying digestate as many do.

I am not worried about the CHP as that is covered under the service contract with 2G.

Its a Siemens PLC and there was no warning as to why it failed, I think I might look into keeping a spare unit in stock as an insurance policy, but if I remember correctly PlanET still have to dial in to work on it once we installed the new PLC.
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
Thats great that you got RHI, its always been an annoyance to me as I use as much heat as I can in our poultry unit, so it displaces all the gas that would be used, rather than just aimlessly drying digestate as many do.

I am not worried about the CHP as that is covered under the service contract with 2G.

Its a Siemens PLC and there was no warning as to why it failed, I think I might look into keeping a spare unit in stock as an insurance policy, but if I remember correctly PlanET still have to dial in to work on it once we installed the new PLC.
If we had not got RHI, I would not have been able to justify thrust boring under 2 roads to replace the heating to 3 farm cottages.

Do you have a copy of the program? Unless you are capable of downloading the software, the PLC itself is just a heap of components. You may need special software to connect to the PLC to send the software, and some types also require a special programming lead.
 
I can see now why you need an experienced engineer to join the business to enable you to step back. i would have thought that a side interest in nuclear physics and brain surgery would be useful as well!
My local AD plant seems to get by with some ex cowmen, at least they understand about shovelling feed into things.
 
Generation for export at peak prices is a possibility, it would need a bigger gasholder than we have (350 m3) which will run the CHP for 3 hours. If you can negotiate the right price for peak lopping, batteries can be viable. I understand the South Australia Tesla installation has a payback of just over a year. I also heard on BBC In Business last week that if it were not for battery storage, last summer's big outage would have been a whole lot bigger.

It wasn’t just batteries, several gas turbines I know of where called in about 5 seconds after the power cut. Batteries of any serious size still don’t seem to be viable in the uk without some form of subsidy. There are plenty of sites ready to go but no one can figure out how to build them out viably.

V interesting post though, lots of details, I wish someone had posted this much detail about PV and biomass back in 2012!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,286
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top