A Spanish small-wind turbine manufacturer has launched a new integrated biogas solution for agricultural, utility and industrial users throughout the UK.
Known as the Norvento-BioPlant, the system enables small and medium sized companies and landowners to sustainably manage organic waste and turn it into renewable gas, electricity or both, allowing them to take a step towards energy independence.
Norvento’s BioPlant is a medium sized system for the agricultural and landfill waste sectors that will benefit from the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) and Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) sweet spots, which range between 150kWh for electricity and 600kWh for heat.
The solution is a modular and automated anaerobic digestion (AD) plant that can be tailored to the energy and budget requirements of the end user, as well as the available fuel source. It collects, stores and treats waste, creating renewable biogas, which is refined and then pumped into a boiler or cogeneration engine to produce heat and electricity when required.
The UK AD market has shown steady growth in recent years, fuelled by FiT and RHI support. It continues to offer opportunities to a diverse range of industries, including farming, food processing, water and waste treatment, and the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors.
These users are able to deploy on-site biogas plants to directly support high energy and heat-intensive production processes. In doing so, they can benefit from reduced energy costs and meet increasingly stringent sustainability targets.
Ivo Arnus, Director of UK Business Development, Norvento, said: “The economics of small and medium biogas generation really stack up for users with energy-intensive on-site processes, especially if the energy demand is heat-based.
“Having supported UK landowners and businesses for some years with our nED100 wind turbines, we’re now enabling these users to further diversify their sources of income with a highly efficient AD system that delivers rapid return on investment and long-term energy cost savings. Wind turbines and biogas solutions share a similar customer base – plus these two technologies can work really well together in a micro-grid, which is the next step for on-site generation.”
Natural Power, the Scottish renewable energy and infrastructure consultancy, has appointed Guy Milligan as senior renewable heat engineer. Guy joins the business from a Grampian-based developer and operator of biomass district heating networks.
The flagship AD power scheme at Hill of Banchory is one of the largest renewable heat networks in Scotland and has been providing renewable heat to an expanding network for more than four years.
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