neil harrison, development of standards for the wood heat sector

Development of Standards for the Wood Heat Sector Newcastle upon Tyne 21 November 2014 Neil Harrison

O v e r v i e w

Introduction

A handful of stories

Where are we now?

Why have standards?

What do we need?

Customer Stories

“He was lovely, he would go to the ends of the earth to help you out.”

C u s t o m e r S t o r y 1 P o u l t r y F a r m e r , G l o u c s , N o v 2 0 1 3 - N o v 2 0 1 4

“What have we done, why did we go with [installer], what are the implications, are we going to lose the farm?”

“I have to go down there every day and see all the mess, and I just can’t see an end to it…”

“It’s a disaster zone. Nothing’s been insulated. It’s just really badly finished. There are leaks in various places. It’s just rotting away.

“We were apprehensive but we trusted him.”

Source : BBC X-Ray TV Programme

“I’m in absolute turmoil with everything.”

C u s t o m e r S t o r y 2 E s t a t e D i s t r i c t H e a t i n g , N o r t h u m b e r l a n d , O c t 2 0 1 4

Source : My voicemail

“Everything’s tripping off and the boiler is saying there’s a fault and the temperature is too high.”

“My builder spoke to [owner] at [installer], and basically, he’s quite happy leaving us in this state, and a tenant with no heating on.”

“The heating won’t go on at all now.”

“You gave me a quote a while ago, can you install this before Christmas?”

C u s t o m e r S t o r y 3 F a r m e r , N o r t h u m b e r l a n d , N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 4

“I’ve got a quote here for £147,000 to do the same thing as you said you’d do, but using 3 x 60kW pellet boilers, and he says he can do it before Christmas.”

“I’m not sure about him. He wanted too much up front, so I went to the plumbers’ merchant and they quoted me £45,000 for the equipment, but said they’d do a 20% discount.”

“So what’s stopping me installing this myself?”

Source : Conversation in our office on Tuesday

“Inappropriate sales promises”

“Too many PV businesses becoming biomass 'experts' and not understanding actually what is required for a good quality installation”.

Why Have Standards?

standard (noun)

A level of quality or attainment

A required or agreed level of quality or attainment

Something used as a measure, norm or model in comparative evaluations

Principles of conduct informed by honour and decency

Origin

Middle English : denoting a flag raised on a pole as a rallying point

W h y H a v e S t a n d a r d s ? S o m e D e f i n i t i o n s

Standards are the foundation stone of any mature sector of the economy, and unlike other energy and RE technologies, there are no industry standards in place governing the installation of biomass boilers.

W h y H a v e S t a n d a r d s ?

Below 45kWth, the MCS scheme provides a degree of protection for domestic consumers (as mandated by the EU RED), but above 45kW, DECC have adopted the principle of caveat emptor to ‘regulate’ quality in the biomass heat market.

Standards can be applied to biomass installations from the trades associated with an installation, e.g. BS 7671 17th Edition for electrical installations, but this largely unregulated.

This principle has not worked in the past and is not working now; There are a sizeable body of distributors and installers who are undermining the work of good installers and the reputation of the sector;


The lack of applied standards is also being exacerbated by the design and implementation of the RHI, e.g. tier break-points encouraging over and undersizing and split circuits; degression points meaning dramatic changes to project economics, etc…

This drives certain types of companies to rush installs and cut corners.

These issues are nothing new. Successive support programme reviews have found that the quality and standards vacuum has prevailed for some time, and is the root cause of many problems in the industry.


Without agreed standards : • there can be no effective contracts to underpin installations;

• there can be no truly effective strategy or implementation of training for the industry;

• there is no recourse for customers with poor quality or failing installations;

• and we cannot honestly call ourselves a profession.

The reviews and their findings include :


The Biomass Task Force (2005) “…there is a confusion of advice, which is quite frightening, and there is confusion amongst the experts in the industry.”;

Scottish Biomass Support Scheme seeing “implementation problems due to the lack of time to develop projects”;

Wood Energy Business Scheme 1 (2010) “only 21% of installations reported no problems”, “Lack of impartial help and professional advice” and “Almost all serious problems rooted in poor planning and design and inadequate external support”.

WEBS2 (2013) reported that “Those installing wood fuel boilers could not identify a single reliable or independent source of advice”;

LCBP (2011) finding that “all non-ESCo installations experienced reliability issues with controls, equipment or fuel supply.”;


Carbon Trust BHA (2007) reported “low capacity factors due to poor design, oversizing and poor support and utilisation in operation”.

Review of installer standards for DECC found evidence of the same issues occurring under the RHI, primarily manifested in scheme efficiencies - ranged from 58%-75% before district heating;

In reality, 88% of all RHI-accredited installations (by July 2014) had no standard scheme applied to their design and execution (the 12% were below 45kW, so MCS rules applied);

A lack of understanding of the technology and over-promising on performance means many installers are setting themselves up to fail by proposing performance standards that simply cannot be met.


While district heating on biomass projects (a common ‘enabler’ for the commercial RHI) saw efficiencies reduced to 30% in extreme cases;

Standards are required to : • help address the problems associated with mis-selling in the

sector, oversizing, etc…; • improve the quality of delivered schemes on the ground; • drive up efficiencies and the utilisation of equipment; • encourage the specification of the right equipment for each

application; • and build the reputation of the biomass heat industry for honesty,

reliability and delivery for customers and for government.


Government has concerns around the performance of the wood heat sector to date, and with its out-performance of all other renewable heat technologies under the RHI, feels exposed.

What Do We Need?

European countries have faced similar challenges, and have responded positively with industry-developed standards, underpinned by QM/QA schemes, in order to successfully grow their wood heat sectors by orders of magnitude compared to that in the UK.

W h a t D o W e N e e d ?

It is proposed that the WHA embark on a process of developing standards which define and specify in detail the good practice principles which underpin a successful wood heat installation.

The standards should be supported by industry-developed QM and QA schemes which are applied to all projects - many European countries link government support to the use of QM procedures for installations.

The standards should be supported in their implementation by a code of conduct for those selling in the sector, to reduce and eventually remove the many instances of mis-selling which are prevalent.


The standards scheme should have “teeth”, and should be accompanied by a comprehensive review of the MCS scheme, which is widely considered to be unfit for purpose.

The development and implementation of standards should be : • industry led; • supported by financially government; • bring in good practice from overseas (perhaps through

Horizon 2020); • and ‘owned’ by the WHA.


Discussion

neil harrison, development of standards for the wood heat sector

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