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Page added on November 16, 2013
New Hampshire: Wood, pellets gain steam
There’s renewed enthusiasm in heavily forested New Hampshire for the idea of homegrown heating sources, primarily wood and — more recently — wood pellets.
For the first time, the state’s Office of Energy and Planning is posting the cost of wood pellets to compare to the other main heating sources. That outreach combined with a supportive regulatory structure have put wood back on the front burner as an environmentally attractive, inexpensive and local alternative to oil, gas and electricity.
In New Hampshire, about 33,500 homes, 6.5 percent, heat with wood, compared with about 2.1 percent of U.S. homes, according to U.S. Census figures. Most New Hampshire homes, about 50 percent, use oil.
Susan Thorne, state energy program associate, said the state has been looking for a way to prop up a timber industry hurt by the closure of the state’s paper mills. New Hampshire’s North Country once boasted about a half-dozen paper mills; all except one in Gorham were shuttered as loggers fought rising costs and growing competition from overseas.
Enter the wood pellet: Cleaner than hardwood, easier to handle and store, more efficient and ready to burn. The little compressed nuggets of sawdust are popping up in more houses, businesses and industrial sites.
“Wood pellets are a much more recent arrival but people have really embraced them,” said Thorne. “It’s still nascent but there’s a lot of interest because of our timber resources here.
“One of the reasons, over 90 percent of our energy comes from outside New Hampshire,” she said. “By increasing our ability to provide some of our own energy, it makes our energy security greater and benefits our economy.”
Charlie Niebling, an energy consultant with Innovative Natural Resource Solutions and former plant manager at New England Wood Pellet, said that notion of energy security was driven home after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks then dual 2005 hurricanes — Katrina and Rita — caused global spikes in petroleum costs. Importing petroleum products costs the state about $1 billion a year.
As of earlier this week, pellets — when delivered in bulk — cost more than only natural gas: $14.98 to produce 1 million BTUs compared to $11.46 for the cheapest natural gas, according to the Office of Energy and Planning. Cord wood was at $15.15, fuel oil at $26.07 while electric was the highest at $43.27 per million BTUs.
“Bulk” is an important word and it points out a problem with pellets: Most people who burn them pick up supplies in 40 pound bags, making transport something of a hassle. Bulk home deliveries range from three to 10 tons, with businesses getting 10 to 30 tons or more.
Thorne and Niebling acknowledge delivery of the pellets is expensive and said the state hopes to get more bulk delivery systems to make it easier for consumers to stock up. Niebling likens the disconnect between commodity and delivery to the same growing pains energy markets went through after World War II when the nation switched from coal to oil.
“It took the better part of two decades for a (fuel oil) distribution system to fall into place,” Niebling said.
Ten years ago, there was one specialized — and expensive — truck to haul pellets in New Hampshire; today, there are about half a dozen, he said.
Cord wood also still maintains its allure: It’s relatively cheap, plentiful and more accessible than pellets.
“If you look at wood, culturally, it’s ingrained,” said Sarah Smith, a forest industry specialist for the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension. “Pellets not so much because it’s the new kid on the block. Those two are going to compete for the residential market.”
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, more than 90 percent of the country will pay more to heat this winter compare to last, mostly because of higher projected costs for natural gas, propane and electricity. Natural gas users will pay an average of $679, about 13 percent higher than in 2012-13. Propane users will see a 9 percent hike to $1,666.
The state’s two biggest natural gas providers recently received approval to raise their rates, increasing the cost for Liberty Utilities customers by 10.4 percent and by 9.8 percent for Northern Utilities consumers. Both companies say rising demand and limited supply in New England drove the rate hikes.
22 Comments on "New Hampshire: Wood, pellets gain steam"
BillT on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 1:49 am
And if the ~500,000 families in New Hampshire all switched to wood pellets, they would be warm, but that does not make any electric or auto fuels or plastics, or … and how long would their forests last if they start cutting down say 1/4 acre of trees per family per year? That’s over 100,000 acres denuded annually to profit pellet makers. Just askin’. ^_^
BTW: The 1/4 acre figure is from my experience heating a small home with wood for several winters in PA. And I was burning Gypsy Moth killed oaks, not the soft woods of NH.
DC on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 2:15 am
Yes indeed. Wood heat can be relatively benign, provided of course, only a few people are doing it. For suburban sprawly amerika, with its leaky, shabbily built sawdust and PVC shacks, wood is a bit a non-starter.
Not even mentioned of course, how much fossil-fuel would be burned to go out and haul all the wood to the suburbs? I dont know, but likely if they just used the FF to heat the homes and keep the trucks and chainsaws at home, the energy balance would be about equal at the end of the day. I am pretty sure most amerikans lack the ability, or desire to go out and fell a tree by hand and haul the results back home with, say, a horse pulling it. I suspect they will want corporations to harvest the wood, package it in neat plastic wrapped bundles, deliver to Home Depit and Costco, OR probably deliver to their homes in 5 ton trucks.
Jus say’n…..
Campephilus on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 3:34 am
Population is very unevenly distributed in NH. It is quite densely populated in the southern tier. I live in Hillsborough, the biggest and unfortunately most suburbanized county at ~400,000 inhabitants. What’s left of the forests around here wouldn’t last long, so it would have to be trucked down from northern parts, which gets to the EROEI issue that DC raised.
There are plenty of sawdust and PVC McShacks around here these days, too.
Keith on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 4:11 am
What about powering down?
MrEnergyCzar on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 4:13 am
I powered down my solar home and now I heat it exclusively with $1,000 of pellets per year, run the stove 24/7 for almost 6 months….
MrEnergyCzar
DC on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 4:52 am
Thats awesome Mr EC, but I think the question is, what would happen if say, 5 million MrEnergyCzars, or 10 million or 100 million all decided that wood pellets were the way to go? The US of waste has long cut down most of its forests to turn into single-use paper ‘plates’, napkins and Wall-mart flyers.
So what would yall do then, import wood pellets from Indonesia. O wait, cant do that, forest are being slashed-burned over there to make palm oil and bio-diesel for Europe. Ok, need some other plan!
Not suggesting what your efforts are ‘wrong’, not at all. But your narrow focus on dollars(toilet paper really), tends to blot out the underlying reality. Wood pellets on any scale=remaining forests mowed down. It hardly matters that you only spend 1k a year. That is beside the point really. Since we over-harvest even theoretically ‘renewable’ resources like tree as relentlessly as we burn oil, mostly for trival reasons, we should consider wood heat in same light as we do oil, imo.
After all,wood pellets dont grow on trees you know…errr….
Beery on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 9:05 am
The best way to heat a home is not to. We have this incredible material that we discovered about 8,000 years ago: wool.
If TSHTF, no one is going to be doing what we do today: wasting fuel heating massive empty spaces in our homes that we don’t actually use. We’re going to be insulating ourselves using wool, not heating our homes using wood, or any other fuel for that matter.
Anyone who has purchased a home heating unit as a way to prepare for a low energy future has missed the point.
simonr on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 9:56 am
Interesting debate.
Two type of people, the ‘I am heating with wood’
and the ‘thats not a scalable solution’
Could we read anything into this.
I fall into the former camp, and you do not actually kill the trees, you coppice ash or green oak, they grow back
Arthur on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 10:14 am
Beery has a point, we are heating the wrong stuff: large volumes of air, furniture and the universe via leaking windows and walls, rather than to ensure that exothermic chemical processes, aka humans, don’t lose too much auto-generated warmth.
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/keep-a-room-warm-for-14-cent-a-day/
simonr on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 11:16 am
http://www.furhatworld.com/womens-black-full-fur-rabbit-russian-hat-p-445.html
J-Gav on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 12:51 pm
We had no heat upstairs in either of the two houses I lived in as a kid in Michigan. But we had fireplaces and a lot of dead elm trees, so the choice was pretty obvious, even if elm isn’t the best quality firewood. Hard work, we didn’t have a chainsaw, but I really enjoyed cording that wood. Times change – I realize I couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) do that today. Though pellets give a more efficient burn than logs, there’s an extra energy-taking process involved there and, as mentioned above, where’s the wood going to come from if a lot of people opt for it? As Simon suggests for those who do it, coppicing might be the best way to go.
Kenz300 on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 1:38 pm
Quote — ““Wood pellets are a much more recent arrival but people have really embraced them,” said Thorne. “It’s still nascent but there’s a lot of interest because of our timber resources here.
“One of the reasons, over 90 percent of our energy comes from outside New Hampshire,” she said. “By increasing our ability to provide some of our own energy, it makes our energy security greater and benefits our economy.”
———————
Local energy and local JOBS…….. a good thing…..
Diversify our energy sources for better energy security and economic security.
ghung on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 4:04 pm
My criteria for energy sources, considering my world view, is not how well they scale up, but how easily they scale down. While solutions to heating structures will vary a lot according to location, these solutions will necessarily become more local and simplified where possible; more volatile and expensive where populations are reliant upon top-down complex solutions and long-distance supply chains. Collectively, it’ll come down to the proverbial ‘too many claims on too few resources’.
In our case, I made sure that good insulation, passive solar, thermal mass, wood heat, hydronic heating and storage, in that order, have been kept as simple as possible. Our need for wood is remarkably low, met mostly from the deadfall in the few acres of forest surrounding the house. While we currently use a very few gallons of gasoline to cut, split and move our firewood, this could be done with a little more effort without these modern energy slaves. Wood also provides all of our domestic hot water during the colder months, including hydronic heating. A simple 1600 liter water tank stores reclaimed heat from the wood heater, to be used later. A few good burns per week is more than enough to supplement solar gain for all of our heating needs.
While the article claims that pellet heaters are more efficient than regular wood burning appliances, I expect that only applies to the combustion process. I don’t expect to ever adopt a system that relies on a factory to produce pellets from wood that has likely been trucked many miles, which requires energy to process and transport the fuel to the point of use. Too many points of failure in that system; too many opportunities for customers to be held hostage to higher prices for various reasons; eventually, too many claims on the system. I’ll keep picking up deadfall and transporting it in my little cart the few hundred yards to where it’s needed. Best hopes most of the rest of you muddle through somehow.
God bless the child who has his own wood lot.
simonr on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 6:20 pm
Hi Ghung
We are wood heated (fires), and in the process of changing to wood hot water/radiators and cooking. We were going for a 200ltr tank, never heard of a 1600ltr jobby.
Do you have a link or any information to share with the class ?
Simon
cusano on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 6:24 pm
What hasn’t been mentioned is sustainable forestry. We heat entirely with wood from our property. I’ve been managing it for 35 years, and you would be hard pressed to see were I remove (about) 14 cords /yr. This takes care of our home, and maple sugaring operation. By practicing sustainable forestry, our woods are healthier than when we found them, produce more, and support a much healthier ecosystem.
Norm on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 7:19 pm
If you don’t put the ashes back in the soil, you take away nutrients needed to grow more trees. People could do this, but they dump it in the garbage instead. To promote their dreams of landfill piles taller than Mount Everest.
Nobody brought up ‘burn wood in what?’ typical American fireplace doesn’t produce heat, it produces an appearance. Techno fixes include, burn outside air, not inside air. Needs to be a woodstove type of appliance, not a fireplace. Needs to have electronic control of damper, to extend burn time by reducing oxygen flow. Needs to have secondary oxygen in burn box (re burn) those tubes should be stainless steel.so they dont corrode away.
There is considerable room for innovation about burning wood fuel. An innovative appliance could affect your fuel consumption by a factor of five or so.
The rich capitalist sneers at all that. He doesn’t want you to have an electronic innovative woodstove controller. Be wants to sit in his big house and count up all his money and hang out in his private swimming pool, private bowling alley, sit in his home theater, or maybe the armaments room. Sit there alone and sneer at the society that was tea-bagger stupid enough to let him have his mountains of money tax-free for the 0.1%
He is not going to allow any innovative wood heat appliances, so you get to burn your 1/4 acre in your fireplace that won’t produce heat anyway.
My little pauper’s shack had the standard American useless woodstove. Produced zero heat. After 18 documented modifications, now it heats the whole house. But will they sell you such a functional appliance? Oh hell no, build your own, or keep burning that 1/4 acre. Throw wood in there like a Union Pacific steam loco goin up the grade, but get no heat for it.
Notice that pellet stove can be well designed electronic,.efficient, and innovative. Not so the wood stoves, all such products are inefficient and lack electronic controls. And will stay that way cause this society too stupid and corrupt to do anything right. Even a fire in your cave, the oldest invention, the rich capitalist won’t sell it to you, not done right.
ghung on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 8:04 pm
@Simon – I used a 450 gallon water tank from these guys:
http://www.carolinawatertank.com/watertanks2.html
1600 liters is it’s approximate current capacity with fittings and heat exchangers installed. It’s made of heavy polyethylene and was guaranteed to 165 degrees F (74 C) by the manufacturer. We keep it between 120 and 160, plenty high for our needs. I insulated it and installed it in an insulated closet in the utility room when I built the house. It is unpressurized with pure water (no glycol) to which I add a corrosion inhibitor.
Before I installed the tank I put a 120 foot coil of 1/2 inch copper in the bottom as a solar heat exchanger, and a 120 foot coil of 3/4″ copper in the top as a heat exchanger for domestic hot water. Water is pumped directly from the bottom, through a DIY copper heat exchanger in the woodstove, and returned to the top of the tank. Since the system is open to atmosphere there is no chance of a pressure explosion. A brass check valve allows flow only in one direction and also promotes thermal-syphoning in the case the pump fails. I use PEX for most of the piping, but CPVC will work. PEX could also be used for the submerged heat exchangers in the tank; just make them longer to offset the conduction efficiency loss vs. copper.
The radiant floor system also draws water directly from the top part of the tank. I used standard bulkhead fittings (two were provided for the ports molded into the tank bottom). I laid the tank on its side to install all of the stuff; the access hole is just big enough for me to wiggle through. I also installed a floor drain in the slab adjacent to the tank for draining, etc.. I put the tank on 4 inches of blue foam board inside the enclosure, and installed a 2 inch drain pipe from the enclosure to the floor drain in case of leak or rupture. I recommend waterproofing the bottom ‘pan’ of the inclosure with shower pan liner. I used leftover “bituthene” from our roof membrane. The tank comes with an overflow port which I piped to the floor drain as well.
I supported the tank’s heat exchanger coils with simple racks built from PVC pipe. I also added a third coil near the bottom for future solar expansion. My current home-built solar-thermal collectors are “drainback” style. Water could be pumped directly from the tank to solar collectors and returned to the top. Keeping the return line above the water level would enable a simple drain back through the pump.
I recently added a 3500 watt water heater element about 18 inches below the high water level through the side of the tank (as low as I could get it at this point) to dump surplus solar electric into when the batteries are full. A brass or SS one inch bulkhead fitting works well for this (in the US, water heater elements fit a 1″ NPT hole). It’s producing a surprising amount of hot water on sunny days since we doubled our PV capacity. Batteries are happy as well. This feature is controlled by a relay on our Outback controllers. When the battery voltage gets above 29 for more than 45 seconds, a relay (30 amp AC contactor) connects the water heater element to our big Trace inverters. Shutoff is at 26.4 volts. All other functions are controlled by their own differential controllers. The woodstove system is set to turn the pump on with a 12 degree F differential. I use Grundfos pumps; stainless where appropriate, and keep some spares even though reliability has been near 100% for ten years. These are fairly low wattage hot water circ pumps. Taco pumps are also recommended.
Domestic water is connected directly through the upper (3/4″) copper coil in the tank; works great, and we love having lots of hot water for showers, etc. Soothes the tired bones. I’ve considered adding a mixing valve since the water can get quite hot, but so far we’re just careful. We make sure that the water in the tank system occasionally stays over 140 degrees to prevent legionella and other pathogens. If the tank gets too hot, we just dump hot water through the floor system. The plastic is easy to drill and poke piping through.
Sorry for the long reply. I’ve considered creating a full post with diagrams, etc., but haven’t gotten around to it. This system has a lot of storage capacity and was intended to be fairly simple, unpressurized, locally maintaiable, and versatile. There are plenty of ways to heat water. One just needs a place to store it. It’s also designed to be fairly failsafe.
ghung on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 8:23 pm
A comment related to my above post: After I installed the water heating exchanger in the top of our woodstove, I noticed the stove pipe was staying much cleaner. Most unburned gasses from the wood are condensing on the heat exchanger and dripping down into the firebox to be re-burned. I clean the stove pipe and inspect before and after the heating season, but it’s pretty much a waste of time these days. Nice side benefit.
Again, it’s an unpressurized open system. Never install a closed system, pressurized water heating exchanger in a woodstove. They have a habit of going boom.
ghung on Sun, 17th Nov 2013 8:57 pm
@ Norm – Some good advice, though wood heaters have come a long way, especially since the EPA got involved. While our wood heater is 30 years old, it’s air inlet is controlled by a simple bi-metal thermostat that has always worked very well; no electronics required. While I modified the secondary air pipe and baffles a little bit to up efficiency (increase air flow and get hotter re-combustion air), the original pipe is plain steel and shows no sign of deterioration. Improving the secondary burn and adding the water heater against the top baffle has resulted in a very clean burning appliance, with virtually any wood. Here’s a picture of our old stove showing the water inlet/outlet I installed: http://i1001.photobucket.com/albums/af140/Ghung/woodstove02.jpg
Please excuse the dust. We were still building when this photo was taken. We heat up the antique curling stone to use as a foot/hand warmer; nice little portable heat storage unit.
Norm on Mon, 18th Nov 2013 12:35 pm
This is indeed interesting. However proves the point… you had to build it yourself (!!!!!). Adding a water pipe to your woodstove seems like it has benefits, yet is a high-risk activity. If the water flow was to stop, the metal will overheat (kinda like fukushiima). Also, superheated water could blow open the pipe, so with those concerns mentioned, I hope you willl be careful.
The bi-metal draft regulator approach, IMHO is not a good solution. It doesn’t consider the temperature of the room, it only considers the temperature of the woodstove. However like you said, no electricity is required for its function. Thx for the pic, and have a great day!
ghung on Mon, 18th Nov 2013 2:05 pm
The copper in the stove heat exchanger is braised to prevent meltdown. I tested it dry at a hot burn before putting water through it and it has held up well for 10 years. It’s also open to atmosphere in the vented tank so can’t build up pressure (no pressure, no superheat). That was the point of my discouraging closed, pressurized systems.
I build (design and assemble) everything myself. If I can’t fix it locally, I don’t want it.
Norm on Tue, 19th Nov 2013 7:49 am
Seems like the hazard, is either
(a) if the pump stops, then the water will boil out
(b) if the pump restarts, you could inject a bunch of water abruptly, which might cause a steam flash and corresponding hazard (as well as possibly crack the red hot copper).
However if you have extensive controls to keep the water flowing and below 212F, or never restart the water if its boiled dry, then you would be in good shape.
Keep up the caution, glad you are getting what you want, some free heat off wood.
I did huge number of modifications to woodstove, as mentioned.
I like we are trading techno-notes, about how to do something. That almost never happens on this website. Its usually just the gloom & doom, the ‘we all gonna die’ scene. Might be true, oil shortage is a scary thing, don’t know.
I tell people before on this website, I did careful redesign of fluorescent light fixtures. In two places.
(a) Garage area, standard Home Cheapo worthless garbage, are the 2-tube fixtures. I carefully built chrome-troffer single-tube fixtures, 100% custom and included electronic ballasts. Instead of using 90 watts per fixture, and using 2 tubes, it uses 32 watts per fixture, and 1 tube. Think the rich capitalist will give you such stuff? Oh hell no, he owns Home Cheapo stock, and he owns the electric utility.
(b) The standard early 1980’s 4′ x 8′ kitchen fluorescent bay ??? Normally divided into 4 plastic diffusers, each diffuser 2′ x 4′. Well, that normally has 8 tubes in it. Everytime, its such an excess it melts the tar out of the conventional ballasts. I did an intricate redesign, with only 2 fluorescent tubes only, and bright white paint, and an unusually good choice of diffuser plastic (Lucite, specific part number).
Guess what? Its extraordinary good light, perfect for the kitchen, plenty bright, not too bright.
It uses 2 tubes, and it uses 62 watts. How bout taht? Think the rich capitalist wants you to have that? Oh hell no.
Attic fan… very important to keeping a house temperature reasonable, and save some energy if you have A/C. The standard Home Cheapo attic fan, uses 460 watts, AND a motor so chinsy and under-rated, its just a rotating short circuit and after 10 yrs go by and it loads up with dust, then it will catch fire and burn your house to the ground. What a deal can I have one ???
I developed an attic fan which uses 120 volt power and draws 27 watts, not 460. It cools the entire attic for a 2-story 1550 sq ft house. Phenomenally happy with the prototype. Does that rich capitalist want you using 27 watts, when you could be using 460 watts? And if your house doesn’t burn to the ground either? All bad, he want to make money off your misery. So, such an attic fan NOT FOR SALE. Cause no manufacturer will actually build anything you would actually want to buy. Not the fluorescent ligths, not the attic fan, nuthin.
So, just crap from the big box, is all we get. I guess we get crapped on. Ya.
Well, too bad on this website, we don’t trade more techno notes. Nice job on your copper coil for woodstove.