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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 12th, 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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