WELtec BioPower started building another 500-kW biogas plant in Gnossall, Stafford. The plant in Staffordshire, West Midlands,England, will be commissioned in January 2010.
The new plant in Staffordshir consists of a stainless-steel digester with a capacity of 107,357 cu ft, two storage tanks of 18,893 cu ft each, and a pasteurisation unit.The investor and farmer will first operate the plant with pig manure and 2,000 tons of maize silage a year. Later on, he plans to ferment food leftovers, for which an extension to the plant is already being planned.
The electricity generated by the WELtec plant is fed into the grid and supplies approximately 1,000 homes. The farmer uses the heat generated by the biogas plant to heat the farm building and dry the digestate, which he can spread over his agricultural areas.
Great Brittain is the second-largest European biogas producer after Germany. The potential is sufficient to supply about 2 million homes with electricity and 1.5 million homes with heat. Nevertheless, as anenergy source, biogas is still not being used as efficiently as it could. One of the reasons why the resources are not used is the compensation system: the feed-in tariffs are based on tradable certificates (Renewable Obligation Certificate – ROC).
Despite the variable feed-in tariffs, the willingness to invest in decentralised energy generation plants is rising slowly but steadily. This is because in the long run, gas prices are bound to increase. Though the investment ratio for plants utilising abattoir waste, plants, and animal excrements has only been two percent so far, the trend is moving up.
