PHMC Community News
Biomass & Our District Heating System
What system do we have & how does it work?
We have 3 x Guntamatic 100kW Powerchip boilers supplying heat and hot water to the dwellings on the estate. Each plant room also houses a 2,000 litre thermal store (tank). This means that in excess of 6000 litres of hot water circulates to transfer heat to the heat exchangers connected to the network.The map above shows the District Heating Network (DHN) and the properties connected to each boiler house.
What are the pellets made from?
Biomass boilers burn organic materials such as wood chips, sawdust, straw, and other plant matter. These materials are commonly known as "biomass" and are sourced from a variety of sustainable sources, including forestry and agricultural waste. These are delivered as pellets.
Who supplies our biomass pellets?
Our biomass pellet supplier is AMP Clean Energy. AMP supply us with low moisture, low ash, high density wood pellet made from 100% virgin timber.
These meet stringent sustainability standards.
What are the billing arrangements for the DHN?
Metering, billing, payment & account management are undertaken by Switch2. Usage (in kWh) is metered and charged accordingly together with the standing charge.
Switch2 bill monthly and the cost per kWh (March 2025) is 34.09 pence per kWh
Must I be connected to the DHN?
Contractually, yes. You may also be liable for the cost of the heat exchanger and its reconnection if you disconnect. There is no benefit in disconnection as contractually you will still be liable to pay the standing charge to Switch2. This is currently (March 2025) 66.406 pence per day (£20.59 per 31 day month.
Biomass operational monitoring
The condition and operation of the biomass plants across our DHN are now monitored electronically. Any planned or unplanned maintenance or other issue affecting service provision will now be alerted, engineers called and importantly, an alert added to the news page of this website. This way you can be kept informed of system outages as, when and if they arise, together with the action being taken and potentially a time estimate as to when service will be reinstated. We will then be in a position to provide service performance data to you - again via this website.
Service Plan & Maintenance
We hope that the benefits of having a service & repair plan are now evident in terms of the reliability of the system and the responsiveness to issues as they arise.
Our Service plan is with TRECO and details can be seen here.
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