O’LEARY – A new biomass heating unit at Community Hospital will save the provincial government $100,000 annually on heating costs, and it didn’t cost the government a penny to have it installed.
Wood4Heating purchased and installed the high-tech boiler from Austrian manufacturer Binder and purchases the wood chips from Arsenault’s Sawmill.
The company maintains ownership of the boiler and charges the provincial government for the heat it supplies to the hospital.
The O’Leary boiler is the first of five the provincial government is having installed across P.E.I. Wood4Heating will start installing similar boiler systems at Bluefield and Three Oaks high schools this summer to have them ready for operation by the fall.
Another company will provide units for M.E. Callaghan and Hernewood schools.
“We’re saving $100,000 a year just in our heating expenses and hot water expenses at this facility,” said O’Leary-Inverness MLA and Tourism Minister Robert Henderson. “ It makes us look much more viable and sustainable into the long term.”
Savings will be more or less, depending on what direction the facility’s traditional source of fuel, oil, heads in.
“We are only purchasing the BTU heat, so it takes us off the oil wheel of whatever happens on the stock market,” Henderson explained.
Wood4Heating signed a 20-year contract with the provincial government to supply heat and hot water for the hospital.
Besides the free infrastructure, Prince Edward Island is gaining a new business and new residents.
Two of the key partners in Wood4Heating, CEO Holger Mannweiller, and the company’s head of sales, Philipp Marktl, indicated during Wednesday’s official opening of the O’Leary boiler that they are moving to P.E.I. to grow their business.
The third partner in the company, Detlev Elsner, admitted they had been trying to convince people in other jurisdictions in Canada of their wood heat technology but hadn’t considered P.E.I. until they saw an RFP seeking just what they were offering on the Internet.
“We are really happy to have found P.E.I.,” he said.
Elsner and Mannweiller are from Germany and Marktl is from Austria.
The O’Leary boiler, he said, becomes a demo model, which they hope will help convince governments in the other Atlantic provinces of the value in wood energy.
“Not only will the new unit reduce the province’s reliance on fossil fuels and its overall carbon footprint,” said Infrastructure Renewal minister Robert Vessey, “but the unit will also provide a stabilizing boost to the Island’s forestry industry which has seen its share of hard times over the past few years.”
Wood4Heating has contracted a Unionvale company, Western Welding, to provide maintenance on its new infrastructure.
Once all five boilers are operational, the Province expects to save $175,000 annually on fuel costs and achieve a 2,500-tonne reduction in carbon emissions per year.
“It just seems like an all-around good opportunity for the community,” said Henderson. “I hope we will see more of this type of technology in other facilities across the community.”
