Market Potentials of Biomass Fired CHP Plants

This study examines, whether there is a market for biomass fired Micro-CHP systems in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In all three countries the majority of the domestic heating systems are quite old and out of date. The market volume of wood driven domestic heating system is about 50?000 pieces in 2009. The market volume in Germany for Micro CHP systems (≤ 50 kWel) is about 4?500 pieces per year; most of them operate with gas. For the economic and the ecological evaluation two different cases are examined. For the first case different systems for an elder building with an energy demand of 35 MWh heat are compared. The second case compares systems for a small district heating system with a heat demand of 1100 MWh. The results show that under the assumed conditions the cheapest system is the gas condensing boiler (CB) but the pellet boiler is only slightly more expensive. If the framework requirements improve slightly, the pellet boiler system can compete with the gas CB systems without governmental aid. Biomass fired Micro-CHP plants are too expensive to can cope with the fossil competitors, although this systems have the best ecological performance. When looking at the district heating systems, combinations of a base load boiler fired with wood chips and a peak load boiler have the best ecological performance. The pellet fired CHP system is due to the gas driven peak load boiler, more expensive and has a lower environmental performance, but is still better than systems, which run only with fossil fuels.