Rape Oil Boiler

[Ivan]

Atlantic do a rather nice, ultra efficient rape oil boiler. Anyone know how much it is? I meant to ring them today, but was 5pm before I had chance.

[Ivan]

I phoned up today - the basic cost is £7000, and that's before any upgrades. The unit doesn't have oxygen sensors and feedback, so it must be factory-set to one particular fuel.

[charlieb]

Where do they expect people to get the fuel? Farmers only? Or would it ever be cost effective to buy bulk veg oil from cash & carry? I know there's a big market for veg oil boilers (and CHP) in Germany and Belgium, but I don't know of anyone supplying it as a heating fuel in the UK.   I reckon there's lots of potential for replacing heating oil with veg oil in the long term, as most people aren't prepared to faff around with solid fuel (even pellets), but I can't find anyone supplying.  I guess you could go to a local farmer, but I doubt you could have much faith in the supply.
C

[KenB]

Charlie,

Rape seed oil has increased in price by a factor of 3 in the last 3 years! It's almost as expensive as diesel.

I'm looking into woodchips as being the least cost heating fuel.


PS did you get my email?


Ken

[Ivan]

I know what you are saying, but there's the issues of choice and application - for example oil boilers and dino oil is more expensive than gas, but people still buy them.

For some situations, a rape oil boiler might be appropriate - eg if you are a farmer and you want to be independant of oil supply problems, or if you live in a location with access difficulties (small island) or if you want to investigate alternative fuels eg waste product from biodiesel (plenty of energy, virtually free or people may even pay you to take it away), or perhaps for novel applications eg algal oil. It also runs on bioethanol (boo, hiss).

Some people are still able to get their hands on cheap or free waste veg oil, too...

[dhaslam]

Is this just an excuse not to build a seasonal store Ivan?

[billi]

Ivan

There are several rape seed oil burners on the market

What most people do in Germany is to set up a CHP system (cause they feed the grid ....) and heating then their house /farm cheap

Here again a bad google translation of a burner

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rapsoelbrenner.de%2F00040.html&hl=de&ie=UTF8&sl=de&tl=en


And here some prices for vegetable oil in europe

http://baseportal.de/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/fmso/ipreise


Billi

[charlieb]

Hi Ken.
No I didn't get your email I'm afraid. Just noticed there was a dot wrong in my profile listing. Have now changed to a different email - hope you can resend (sorry if it's got lost in the ether). weejock100squigglyatyahoo.com
Charlie

[charlieb]

Germany has VERY generous feed in tariff for domestic biomass CHP; makes it absolutely worthwhile to burn veg oil. (Their natural gas CHP support makes the Dachs 5 kWe unit pretty attractive too, at least to energy geeks). This seems to be the global commodity price for RSO - I guess delivered price will be a few pence per litre over this. http://indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=rapeseed-oil&months=60

  Do you know if you pay duty on veg oil for heating/CHP in the UK Ivan?

[KenB]

Charlie,

That chart really shows why we are all struggling to obtain low cost rape seed oil. 

With 1kWh of natural gas costing about 4.65p with the new price rises, this sets the baseline for domestic energy costs,  £800 for 1 tonne of RSO looks a bit sick at about 7.2p/kWh.

Email resent to your new address.


Ken

[renewablejohn]

How can lidl charge 0.99 euro for rape oil in Ireland but £1.19 sterling in UK. clear case of rip off Britain   

[Ivan]

You shouldn't have to pay any duty on rape oil for domestic CHP use. However, heating fuels are vat-rated at 5% whereas I assume vegetable oil in supermarkets is zero-rated (not sure, as some foods are and some foods aren't). So you might have to declare and pay the 5% vat.....which I'm sure you would!