Clarke Energy is assisting Agrivert to produce renewable energy from Oxfordshire Council’s waste. Agrivert’s new Wallingford Anaerobic digestion facility is helping to deliver a sustainable solution to both waste treatment and renewable energy production in Oxfordshire. The anaerobic digester processes food waste collected from Oxfordshire County Council and other local sources and produces biogas, a renewable fuel. The biogas is used in a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, achieving fuel efficiency in excess of 84%.
The anaerobic digestion facility delivers a number of benefits including:
- Food waste is diverted from landfill and is used to create enough renewable electricity to power 6,000 average UK homes
- Agrivert’s digester produces biogas, a renewable fuel which is converted at high efficiency to electricity and heat using a gas engine CHP plant installed by Clarke Energy
- Clarke Energy installs, commissions and tests engine’s connection to the grid in record time.
The Wallingford Anaerobic Digestion facility is able to treat 45,000 tonnes of food waste originating in Oxfordshire each year. It utilises two GE Power & Water, high-efficiency JGMC416GS-BL Jenbacher gas engines. The biogas engines are capable of producing a combined output of 4.7MW of renewable energy in the form of 2.4MWe electricity and 2.30MWth heat. The heat is used to keep the digesters at the correct temperatures for the plants operation, and to pasteurise the food waste, hence ensuring the fertiliser quality meets the highest standards. The electricity is in turn exported to the local electricity grid delivering renewable power to the surrounding area.
The biogas CHP plant was commissioned in December 2012 and passed G59 grid connection tests in a record time for Clarke Energy. The biogas engine arrived on site on a Saturday and by Wednesday had been installed, commissioned and passed G59 grid connection tests. This speed was essential for Agrivert to meet the cutoff date for being awarded the higher rate feed-in-tariffs from Ofgem.
Ron McIlwraith Engineering Director at Agrivert stated
“Thanks to everyone at Clarke Energy and all involved sub-contractors for the fantastic effort in enabling us to comply with the requirements of claiming higher rate FITs.
The achievement of this goal, two days ahead of the deadline, provides physical evidence that Clarke Energy are truly a customer focused, quality organisation. This extends throughout the organisation from your own involvement which was very much appreciated, through the project management and procurement chain to all of the staff and sub-contractors on site who have worked in miserable cold and wet conditions to pull it all together.
A huge thank you, and congratulations on achieving this important milestone”
Alan Fletcher, Main Board Director of Clarke Energy comments
“We are delighted to be expanding our relationship with Agrivert, one of the UK’s leading anaerobic digestion companies, to deliver a high efficiency biogas CHP system in Oxfordshire. Our focus going forwards will be on ensuring the company’s satisfaction by delivering high levels of after sales support through our gas engine service network”
For more information contact
Alex Marshall, Group Marketing Manager, Clarke Energy
alex.marshall@clarke-energy.com
+44 7917 066 242
About Clarke Energy
Clarke Energy’s global headquarters are located in Liverpool, England. The company has experienced a number of year’s robust growth, exceeding £208million turnover in 2012.
Clarke Energy has a long standing-relationship with GE Power and Water’s Jenbacher gas engines business and has installed over 2,750MW of generation capacity globally. Of this total 870MW is on biological gas applications. Originating in the UK, the company is now present in ten countries worldwide.
GE’s Jenbacher gas engines can operate on a wide range of renewable and low-carbon fuels including natural gas, biogas, sewage gas, landfill gas and coal seam gas.
About Agrivert
Agrivert provides innovative organic waste management solutions and sewage treatment solutions to the waste and water sectors.
Agrivert offers anaerobic digestion and in-vessel composting technologies to treat source segregated food, green and co-mingled wastes. Agrivert also provides composting solutions for green garden waste.
Agrivert provides a range of technologies and services to the water industry that reduce the operating costs of treating and recycling biosolids.
Anaerobic digestion
Anaerobic digestion is a technology utilising microbes to break down organic material into biogas, a renewable fuel and digestate, a low-carbon fertiliser. Biogas can be converted into electricity and useful heat using gas engines. Renewable power derived from biogas can be delivered on a constant basis, and differs from other intermittent forms of renewable electricity such as wind, solar and tidal.
Combined heat and power
Combined heat and power (CHP) is the process by which a fuel is converted into electricity, in parallel recovering and using the heat released during the combustion process. CHP delivers exceptionally high levels of fuel conversion efficiency. CHP produces the power close to the end user, this helps to reduce electricity losses from the transportation of power from large, centralised power plants.
Feed in tariff
Feed in tariffs are a mechanism in the UK for subsidising the production of renewable electricity in the UK.
G59
Engineering Recommendation G59-2 is the current requirement for the connection of an embedded generation facility to the UK’s national electricity grid. The specification attempts to specify basic functionality requirements to protect both the grid and embedded power generation. Prior to an embedded generator being able to export electricity it must pass a G59 grid synchronisation test.
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