Meeting to Focus on the Opportunities and Potential for District Heating Systems Using Renewable Fuels in New Hampshire
 

Edited by Rick DeMark, Coordinator - North Country Resource Conservation & Development Area

Information and Data by Dr. Morris Pierce, Energy Manager, University of Rochester, New York

The ever-rising price of traditional heating fuels has many people taking a serious look at ways to reduce use and dependence on fossil fuels.  New Hampshire offers significant potential for installation of new community scale district energy systems to increase energy efficiency, displace imported fossil fuels with local renewable resources, alleviate fuel poverty, create local jobs, and promote economic development.

As a catalyst to try and promote this technology within New Hampshire, the North Country Resource Conservation  & Development (RC&D) Area Council is hosting a meeting on April 17, 2008 in the Peabody Base Lodge at Cannon Mountain that will explain how district heating systems work and their benefits.  Go to www.nhrcd.net for details on how to register for the meeting by April 11, 2008.  
 

A district heating system requires a low cost heat source and a hot water distribution system designed to eventually serve every building in a particular community and possibly surrounding areas.  In some communities an existing power plant or industrial facility may be able to supply low temperature hot water (190°F) for the system, while in other communities a new biomass plant will be constructed to burn clean wood residues and in some cases short rotation energy crops grown by local farmers.  Where space is available, large solar thermal arrays can also generate perhaps 3 to 5 percent of a community’s annual heat requirements without burning anything.   
 

District energy systems are very common in Europe and particularly Denmark and Sweden in Scandinavia, where standards have been developed for prefabricated piping systems to minimize installation and operating costs as well as insuring the long-term integrity of the piping network. 
 

A few district heating systems exist in New Hampshire.  Concord Steam supplies heat to many Concord buildings using biomass wood chips as does the Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center in Greenfield, NH.  Several college campuses, such as the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in Durham and Plymouth State University have centralized district heating systems, currently using fossil fuels.
 

A new non profit organization, the Northeast District Energy Corporation, has been assembled to develop and build new community-wide district energy systems in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire.  The initial goal is to establish at least one new system in each state to gain experience with specific regulatory and financing requirements in each of those jurisdictions.  Systems are being developed in communities ranging in size from small villages to large cities, and include existing heat sources and new biomass plants.  These projects will validate the design standards and technology for the thermal distribution systems and biomass plants, while gaining experience in connecting a wide variety of buildings.  
  

In New Hampshire, a district heating system is currently being evaluated for Groveton. The once proposed Groveton Renewable Energy Park, which was to include a 70 megawatt electrical generating plant, could have been an ideal heat source of heat for that community, which has about 8900 heating degree days annually, making it one of the colder places in the continental United States. The record low temperature recorded in Groveton was -40° on February 12^th, 1979 and the peak heating demand for Groveton’s residential and commercial buildings is estimated to be between 50 and 60 million BTUs per hour.
 

Depending on the size and capacity of the heat source, additional heat could be delivered to other nearby communities or businesses using hot water transmission pipelines, which are commonly used in Europe to deliver heat dozens of miles from large power plants to urban areas.  Lancaster, for instance, is roughly ten miles away with a potential route along an existing railroad, which could significantly increase the economic and environmental value of the Groveton project. 
 

The development team of the Northeast District Heating Corporation is working on several similar projects in New York and other New England states, and depending on how they proceed, it may be desirable to establish an entity to provide ongoing monitoring and support for all of these systems, since each system would be too small to support in-house expertise in each specialty.  In particular meter reading and billing could be done very efficiently by an entity specializing in this, while monitoring of efficiency, emissions, and heating systems to identify potential small problems before they become big will also be very valuable.  Other services could include marketing, customer support, pipeline extensions to additional customers, and pipeline documentation.  Contracts for boiler and steam turbine maintenance may also be more economical if many units were included.

For additional information on the potential for district heating in New Hampshire contact: Rick DeMark, Project Coordinator of the North Country Resource Conservation & Development Area at (603) 527-2093.

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