The client who commissioned us this plant is a large holiday farm located in the Umbria countryside near the border with Tuscany, that includes several restructured historical buildings, as well as a 60-hectares park including woods and fields. They decided to monetize the waste biomass their park produces (i.e.pruning residues) by using its combustion to generate electricity taking advantage of the existing state incentives.
Pruning residues are collected and used to fuel a movable-grate Herz-Binder boiler that feeds the 1.6MW of heat it generates to two ZE-100-LT ORC modules. Said ORC modules are hosted, together with the boiler, inside a purpose-built building, each on its own skid with its turbogenerator, exchangers and control panel, but operating in parallel with each other. The power produced by the ORC modules (200 kW) is output to the national grid via a nearby grid connection cabin.
The ORC plant was built with the project financing formula by an energy services company (E.S.CO) which financed the whole plant in exchange for its ownership and earnings for the first years of the plant’s life, during which the client will supply the biomass at a set cost. On expiry of the payback period, plant ownership will be given back to the client, which will have then acquired the plant practically for free. As all biomass, pruning residues are an environmentally friendly, renewable and incentivated energy source that’s CO2-neutral as the CO2 released when burning biomass is the same captured during biomass growth.
