The most energy inefficient business in the United Kingdom is care homes heating. In this case, the Government of the country offers financial incentives for those care homes, which are ready to replace their fossil fuels fired heating systems with the new ones, driven by wood pellets.
The old people need warmer accommodation. Those, who live in the retirement homes, also consume a great amount of power in order to make a laundry and cleaning, wash the dishes, cook some food, take a bath or a shower etc. All of these things require heated water. Consequently, the energy expenditures are rising.
In this context, the government of the country has launched an environmental program, Non-Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), which aims to provide the schools, care homes, hospitals and other large properties with financial incentives.
Such incentives are to give a spur for these institutions to replace their outdated and expensive heating systems with the new ones, which are based on renewable energy sources.
For instance, care homes have an opportunity to install and utilize biomass-fired boiler systems. They will be receiving governmental funding during the next twenty years.
Subsidies, provided by Non-Domestic RHI, are valid according to the energy policy of the United Kingdom. The main of such policy is to reduce the use of fossil fuels and replace them with alternative energy sources.
There are two reasons to use the renewables. The first one is connected to the finances. Fossil fuels, such as coal, gas and oil, are quite expensive. That is why those public bodies, which are using the heating systems based on the conventional energy sources, bear exceedingly high expenses.
Another reason is that the use of fossil fuel is environment-unfriendly. For instance, the coal combustion leads to the carbon dioxide emission. It is generally accepted, that the carbon dioxide release results in the greenhouse effect. Though the combustion of wood pellets also leads to the greenhouse gas emission, it is not that critical.
The biomass-fired boilers, which care homes are to install, are driven by the wood fuel instead of liquid or gas fossil fuels. As it was mentioned before, such boilers are much cleaner. Beyond that, they are user-friendly and simple to service.
Biomass-fired boilers are, on contrast to those, which are driven by the fossil fuel, specially constructed. It makes it possible to create a heating system, which is enabled to provide space and water heating for the multitude of houses. In this case, such heating system is much more energy efficient: it takes lesser electricity and is able to serve more buildings, than the traditional heating systems do.
There are more possibilities for such boilers installation. As they do not require any special maintenance condition, they can be installed in any appropriate place. That is to say, that biomass boilers are enabled to be in operation wherever customer whishes: in the separate room, in the room with other boilers, in the car park or somewhere nearby the building.
It is interesting, that some retirement homes have already installed the biomass-fired heating systems. A residential care home near Doncaster (Rock House Residential Home) is one of them. The use of boilers, driven by the wood fuel, has reduced electricity expenditures of this care home significantly. This retirement home has installed a new heating system, which consists of seven boilers, in an external biomass plant room.
The biomass boilers producers revealed some data, which demonstrates efficiency of the alternative heating system. First of all, such boilers usage makes it possible to reduce consumers' current electricity bills by 60 per cent. Total savings will equate more than £11 million in 20 years. That is to say, that the difference in fuel costs when moving to biomass can be as much as 40-50%, saved annually.
Moreover, biomass boilers give an opportunity to make the space and water heating more environment-friendly. In this context, the carbon dioxide release is expected to reduce by 122 tonnes year-on-year. Additionally, the biomass boilers efficiency comes to more than 90 per cent.
