Biomass Help Please

[SRE]

I'm not up to scratch with biomass other than the basic principles. My accountant has a client who has installed a 65kw biomass boiler in his home and has tried to put it through his business even though it's nowhere near the house. Here's the brief details I've been given 2nd hand:

65kw boiler for a bog standard c1900 3 bed farmhouse which isn't that big.
There is the potential in the future ( 5 - 6 years ) to use some of the excess heat for next door which belongs to his sister but definitely not now.

He's been sold it as a commercial biomass job even though as far as I can see there's no conceivable way of using it at the minute as a commercial installation. I understood that the RHI is deemed in a domestic property but he hasn't had an EPC done and given how old and poorly insulated it is I'm not sure it would meet the D rating.

Surely this is oversized - I've gone back through some of my old EPCs and none of the similar type of houses have anything more than 30kw heat & hot water requirements. If the RHI is deemed then surely this is going to take forever to pay back.

The client has assumed he can offset the capital cost and vat via the business - which is haulage and nowhere near the installation. If he changes it to a residential then surely it's massively oversized and if he wants to claim RHI now even if he does get a D rating it will take forever to payback.

Apologies for the vagueness but it's come to me 2nd hand and you know what that's like! The accountant can't make head or tail of the figures the installer has provided (other than he's indicated a heat load of 65kw!)

Any thoughts??

 

[Gavin A]

miss selling, complain to trading standards / RECC, sue the company that sold him the system.

people really need to stop messing about with this stuff, and actually sue the companies involved.

unless this was actually all his idea to game the system, in which case I'd have no sympathy.

 

[SRE]

That was my thought Gavin - he's been sold up the river. The problem is if he's been sold a commercial system he can't go to RECC, so I suppose it's trading standards - but do they cover commercial?

Fortunately he hasn't paid for it yet - his accountant advised him not to until he'd checked. Does he need an EPC for a commercial installation just as you would for pv?

 

[Gavin A]

he can go to recc as it's clearly a domestic situation, the miss selling is that they've sold him a commercial system for a domestic situation.

unless you're saying that they aren't RECC members, in which case it's trading standards.

or just continue to withold the money until it's sorted with an appropriately sized domestic system for domestic RHI payments at an appropriate cost.

 

[BruceB]

Just off out so no time for a long answer, but he does not need to achieve any particular level of EPC. If domestic then he does need GDA and EPC, but the worse the EPC is, the more will be the deemed RHI payment. If GDA recommends increasing loft insulation or adding cavity wall insulation, then that will have to be done and a second EPC obtained before claiming domestic RHI.

If he wants to claim commercial RHI then it must be heating x2 council taxes or clearly be heating something commercial as well as the domestic house (often evidenced by business rates being paid). And be metered.

 

[TedM]

The guy is probably stuffed.

The EPC and building layout/use (outbuildings) basically determine whether the property is eligible for either the domestic or non-domestic RHI. From your description it can only be domestic. Supplying 2 houses would make it eligible for non-domestic.

For domestic RHI the boiler must be on the OFGEM RHI Product Eligibility List. I'm pretty sure there are no 65 kW boilers on that list as MCS only covers products up to 45 kW thermal.

 

[SRE]

Thanks Ted - I suppose the only option he really has is to do his sister's house now rather than in 5/6 years time so at least it will go through as commercial but it won't be able to go through his haulage business, I think he'll have to set up a small sideline - we've done this with a couple of pv installations we have on houses that we rent out.

From what everyone is saying, he'll have to install a heat meter for both and the RHI will be metered rather than deemed. Have I got that right?

 

[BruceB]

Looking here, you might be ok with a single meter if the distribution pipes are properly insulated
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publicatio...stic-renewable-heating-incentive-metering-faq
but it gets complicated and I think I have read elsewhere that ofgem still want the losses allowed for.

 

[Gavin A]

tbh it does sound like this guy was chancing his arm a lot here, he must have known he wasn't really entitled to put this through his business, so my sympathies are limited, sounds like he was trying to tax dodge at best.

 

[Worcester]

Good advice, not a lot to add, you can go up to 70kWth on domestic, however not with a single boiler, they'd have to be 2 units in cascade.
Generally stuffed on the domestic RHI as per all comments above.
Commercial RHI, yes needs metering, they won't pay for losses. As commercial, same as with PV, plant owner doesn't have to be building owner, so could be owned by the haulage business and they sell heat to both properties, so they'd want house by house metering , easily done these days with units designed to replace the boiler with a hex and built in pumps / meters etc all available off the shelf. as said above needs to be > 1 property.