News Story

August 2011
New Renewable Power Technology Sparks Decentralised Energy Revolution

One of Europe’s fastest-growing low-carbon energy companies, LowC Communities Ltd, has announced the arrival of a renewable energy generation technology that will revolutionise the UK’s ability to secure a clean, sustainable and low-cost decentralised energy supply - at a community level.

Using locally-grown sustainably sourced wood, the technology, named Arbor ElectroGen, utilises a highly-advanced form of gasification - a simple process that can trace its roots back to the 1800s when it was first used to produce ‘town gas’ from coal.

Put simply, the wood is decomposed at very high temperature in a chamber that has low levels of oxygen present, which produces a combustible gas. This clean gas is captured, cooled and used to power a reciprocating internal combustion engine - not dissimilar to those found in large commercial vehicles. Known as combined heat and power (CHP), the engine drives an alternator to generate electricity and the heat produced by the engine is recovered and made available as hot water for heating.

Due to the efficiency of the process - coupled with use of a renewable fuel that’s absorbed carbon dioxide during its lifetime - the technology offers incredibly-low carbon energy. This technology could make a significant contribution towards the UK Government’s targets for the year 2020 - where they plan to cut carbon emissions by 34% and have the country deriving 15% of its total energy from renewable sources.

As an example – annually the Company’s 500kW system will produce around 4,000 MWh of renewable electricity and 6,000 MWh of renewable heat, saving around 3,000 tonnes of carbon emissions from just 3,440 tonnes of renewable fuel. Put into context, this would equate to the annual carbon emissions from 500 typical 3-bedroom homes.

Richard Griffin, chief executive of LowC Communities Ltd, said: “Many companies have tried to produce electrical power from biomass fuels such as wood, but they’ve either failed or only managed to achieve low levels of efficiency and reliability. Importantly, this also includes old coal-fired power stations that have been converted to run on imported wood pellets – particularly as they dump most of the waste heat produced by the electrical generation process.”

“Albeit new to the UK, through the life of its development, our advanced gasification technology has been fully proven in commercial operation – drawing on experience gained from thousands of sites located throughout the world during the last 50 years.”

“Currently, the system has been designed to produce heat and power at a community-based level – up to 500kW of electricity - which is sufficient to power around 800 homes. Its modular construction means that it’s scalable upwards and we are looking at a project that’s ten times that size.”

The company claims that the technology represents a significant leap forward in terms of the cost-effectiveness of delivering renewable energy. Richard Griffin continued: “Currently, there’s an inappropriately large amount of money being pumped into subsidising the cost of installing solar PV (photo-voltaic) panels through the Feed in Tariff. When evaluating the financial cost of solar PV versus our biomass CHP system, you’d need to fit solar panels to around 3,500 homes* in order to reach the same level of annual carbon savings that one 500kw Arbor ElectroGen system can produce. What’s more, it requires a fraction of the capital cost.”

“This will help relieve the burden on electricity consumers who are ultimately footing the bill for the ‘greening’ of our nation’s energy supply – something that I’m sure would be very-much welcomed.

“At one of our pilot projects, the advanced gasification system will be installed on a well-established country estate and produce heat and power for the estate buildings and around 80 homes. The system would create the UK’s first truly ‘carbon negative’ community applied in a retro-fit manner – as it will be saving more emissions than it’s able to consume – with the excess electricity being exported into the local grid.”

This decentralised approach to power generation ensures that energy is consumed locally – avoiding the inefficiencies and losses associated with transporting electricity long distances via the national grid. It also helps to overcome the increasing problem of balancing the grid by producing energy when and where it’s required.

The Government won’t be the only organisation to benefit from this renewable technology. The UK construction industry is facing a challenge in meeting the ever more stringent energy targets for new buildings and communities. Currently, many in the industry are blinkered towards installing token amounts of renewable energy to produce heating and hot water to satisfy the planning process – missing the most valuable prize in terms of carbon savings… electricity**.

With renewable CHP, both the electrical and thermal demands for a building can be satisfied – making the carbon savings that much higher. This will help the construction industry meet and exceed targets for the built environment – creating many more carbon-neutral communities along the way.

This advanced gasification system is much cleaner than wood-fuelled heat-only biomass boilers. Due to the high temperature of the gasification process, there’s none of the air quality issues that are inherent in other biomass technologies – with no visible smoke plume. This vastly reduces the respiratory health risk associated with traditional biomass combustion technologies.

LowC is currently in the early stages of developing a number of UK projects – which will supply energy to many different types of consumers, including new-build housing developments; country estates, hospitals and leisure facilities.

ENDS
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Notes to Editors

*Basis for Solar PV comparison used above:
Assuming an average PV home installation of 2kW – with an average output of 1,700 kWh of electricity per year. To meet the same carbon reduction level as the Arbor ElectroGen 500kWe system – it would require 3,500 houses to have a 2kW PV installation. At an average cost of £10,000 for the 2kW installation this would mean an investment of £35,000,000 to achieve the same carbon reduction. http://www.solarenergyexperts.co.uk/pv-panel-prices used as basis of assumptions

**When comparing the carbon emitted by a grid-based electricity supply against heating and hot water produced by natural gas (the most common form of fuel) there’s around three times more carbon emitted for each unit of electricity.

Further Press Information
Please contact Tim Ward of Parker Ward Limited.
T: +44(0)1743 344 197
M: +44 (0)7966 022 532 (out of hours)
E: tim@parker-ward.com