Got Powered!

The National Centre for Biomass Boilers, launched in December 2009 by the Spanish Association of Biomass Energy Recovery (Avebiom), already has the first official figures: 1,200 installations and 250 MW of power. The cast is headed by autonomous region Castilla y León, followed by Euskadi and Castilla-La Mancha.

Among the diverse and practical information Avebiom initiative listed 18 district with heating or centralized heating, distributed through Andalusia, Asturias, Catalonia, Castilla-La Mancha, Castilla y León, Madrid, Navarra and the Basque Country.

The 20 MW of district heating are among the total 250 MW reported so far in the National Centre for Biomass Boilers, corresponding to 1,200 installations throughout Spain. Javier Diaz, president of Avebiom, explains that “we are very interested in innovative and high-efficiency or easily replicable projects, so we will try to give maximum publicity to the facilities registered, and therefore the companies.” “Certainly,” he continues, ” it is an action that has commercial advantages as well and installation companies can take advantage of it.”

The first observatory report confirms that “although there is a great number of facilities in the domestic sphere (719), the industry (294 plants) has more kilowatts from the use of more powerful boilers.” The average power unit in industrial installations (wood industry and furniture, agricultural and farming, etc.) is 350 kW. Households have installed boilers with average power of 55 kW and the public sector (municipalities, sports, schools, district heating , etc) has 300 kW in average in 185 facilities in total.

Avebiom emphasize that in industrial plants related to agriculture and timber there is the largest number of power-consuming facilities, mainly due to the greater ease of access to raw materials. An outstanding example is mentioned to be an agricultural cooperative Losar de la Vera (Cáceres), between 2007 and 2008 it has installed six boilers for their snuff dryers totaling nearly 10 MW. Interestingly, Extremadura is one of the regions with the highest number of installations contribute to the current record. Castilla y León tops the list with more than 25%, Euskadi (17%), Castilla-La Mancha (15%) and Catalonia (10%). Andalusia, Asturias and Madrid exceed or are about 5% and the rest below that percentage.

  Share