Solar Generation May Sideline Biomass Heating

[Note: this arti­cle is writ­ten by long-time wood stove cheer­leader, John Ack­er­ly.  It’s nice to see him admit­ting that his wood-burn­ing dreams are about to be dashed by solar pow­er.  Ener­gy Jus­tice does not sup­port com­bus­tion sources for heat­ing, since non-burn alter­na­tives exist, and since there are many pol­lu­tion and health prob­lems relat­ing to wood stoves.]

- John Ack­er­ly, May 1, 2015, Bio­mass Magazine

Most of us have looked at the explo­sive growth of solar pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems as just a par­al­lel and com­ple­men­tary renew­able ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy.  Solar pan­els make kilo­watts while wood and pel­let stoves make Btus, right?  Wrong.

To stay rel­e­vant, the bio­mass heat­ing indus­try needs to keep abreast of rapid advances in the solar indus­try. We also need to think of ways to inte­grate our tech­nol­o­gy with oth­er renew­ables, and we need to explore how that inte­gra­tion can hap­pen right away, because renew­able ener­gy pol­i­cy deci­sions being made now will impact our indus­try in com­ing decades.

The solar indus­try has a vision, ambi­tion and plan for rapid expan­sion that is large­ly absent in the wood and pel­let stove com­mu­ni­ty.  Path­ways for rapid expan­sion of pel­let tech­nolo­gies are being devel­oped in Europe, but not in the U.S.  While solar advo­cates are focused on a wide range of financ­ing options, reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works, R&D, util­i­ty part­ner­ships, the wood and pel­let stove indus­try seems to put more effort into try­ing to main­tain the sta­tus quo and fight against regulations. 

Many pel­let stoves and boil­ers are now clean and effi­cient enough to be part of the main­stream renew­able ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion.  But they remain an after­thought in most state and fed­er­al pro­grams.  Part of the prob­lem is that we are not inte­grat­ed into the solar com­mu­ni­ty, which is mak­ing more and more break­throughs in many cir­cles.  Per­haps the most impor­tant break­throughs are in the imag­i­na­tions of the gen­er­al public.

A recent study by the Rocky Moun­tain Insti­tute, a think tank for ener­gy pol­i­cy, found that solar will become eco­nom­ic for near­ly all cus­tomers very soon, and that solar-plus-bat­tery sys­tems will fol­low suit with­in the next 10 to 15 years.   It’s bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy that may ulti­mate­ly pose the great­est dis­rup­tive threat for util­i­ties, sig­nal­ing what may be a com­plete break­down of the tra­di­tion­al cen­tral­ized pow­er and grid model.

A first step for the indus­try is to start inte­grat­ing bat­ter­ies that would enable pel­let stoves to run for at least 12 to 24 hours dur­ing a pow­er out­age.  Inte­grat­ing a bat­tery pack seam­less­ly into a pel­let stove, with­out sig­nif­i­cant­ly rais­ing the pur­chase price, would give that man­u­fac­tur­er a big edge on the mar­ket.  It would also help the solar indus­try real­ize pel­let stoves requir­ing low amounts of elec­tric­i­ty have the poten­tial to oper­ate well even in off-grid homes. 

Wood and pel­let stoves and boil­ers can also eas­i­ly gen­er­ate small amounts of elec­tric­i­ty, enough to recharge phones and com­put­ers and run a few lights.  This tech­nol­o­gy has been out there for years, but no stove or boil­er com­pa­ny has tak­en advan­tage of it.  Again, the ben­e­fit is not just to pro­vide the con­sumer with a ground­break­ing appli­ca­tion for stoves, but to spark the imag­i­na­tion of the gen­er­al pub­lic that bio­mass heaters are an excit­ing part of the renew­able ener­gy movement.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the wood and pel­let stove indus­try has deploy­ment num­bers that the solar indus­try could only envy for many years.  Ten mil­lion homes in Amer­i­ca have wood and pel­let stoves, where­as solar PV may just be cross­ing the 1 mil­lion mark soon. As their star becomes brighter, ours is in dan­ger of becom­ing dim­mer. Pub­lic opin­ion is shift­ing, and poli­cies and incen­tives are shift­ing along with it. 

As solar sys­tems become more effi­cient and more robust, they can also start tak­ing on some of the heat load of homes, espe­cial­ly as cold cli­mate heat pumps become more effi­cient and afford­able.  Incen­tive pro­grams in the North­east are already start­ing to push heat pumps much more than pel­let stoves.  At the same time, we are see­ing more and more urban areas restrict the use of wood stoves due to air qual­i­ty concerns.

If the envi­ron­men­tal com­mu­ni­ty finds itself fight­ing against the wood stove indus­try more than they are part­ner­ing with it, we may lose momen­tum. The wood and pel­let stove indus­try should make sure that its law­suit against the EPA’s new reg­u­la­tions is not seen as a fight for the sta­tus quo. Main­tain­ing the sta­tus quo for wood and pel­let heaters is ulti­mate­ly the worst thing that could hap­pen, because we need to keep apace of the rapid changes in the res­i­den­tial dis­trib­uted renew­able ener­gy sec­tor. That means being part of dis­cus­sions on cre­ative financ­ing mech­a­nisms, inte­gra­tion with solar and geot­her­mal sys­tems and with­in the green build­ing and home per­for­mance com­mu­ni­ties.  Mount­ing a major law­suit against the EPA may just draw pre­cious resources away from the real oppor­tu­ni­ties before us.