Did you know that the payback for upgrading your boilers could be as low as three years?

 It’s time to take action and this means reviewing the economics of modulating condensing boilers and upgraded boiler controls, versus where you are now.

Resisting investment

You may be resisting any refurbishment or new investment in plant until there’s a convincing economic upturn, with the laudable intention of going for renewables later in preference to a half-way house now. In reality though, renewable energy systems cost significantly more than gas fired boiler replacements, and despite the support available via the Renewable Heat Incentive and Feed in Tariff, finance is still required to fund those projects, which often integrate gas fired and renewable energy for the ultimate solution.

Better then, to achieve worthwhile benefits right away, upgrading the boiler plant and associated controls using products such as Hamworthy’s fully modulating Fleet boilers.

A further incentive to invest in new heating plant is the Enhanced Capital Allowance (ECA) scheme that is available when using products such as the Fleet range which is on the approved Energy Technology List (ETL) managed by the Carbon Trust, to give additional tax benefits and improved cash flow conditions.
 

Staged approach to upgrading

Since modulating condensing boilers are generally used to back up renewables, follow-on investment in renewable technologies can always be added later. For the immediate future it is quite possible to achieve payback periods of less than three years along with significant carbon savings when replacing older boilers. At Hamworthy we are always happy to talk about how this can be achieved in any particular situation.

We believe that end users with multiple properties, such as in the health sector, education sector, hotel chains and leisure centres have most to gain, and would encourage you to test this through single building pilot projects. Once delighted with the results, roll out across multiple buildings can be scheduled to multiply the benefit.
 

Boiler Refurbishment Financial Payback

To illustrate the benefits and financial payback period of upgrading your old boiler plant to fully modulating boilers, take the following example:
• A building which has heating available on demand continuously, seven days a week such as residential buildings, hotels, care homes, universities or even some hospitals
• A typical load profile which calculates to 3418 annual load hours - 39 per cent utilisation.
• The system is operating at 80°C and existing boiler plant comprises six atmospheric cast iron boilers, each 120kW output with a single stage on/off burner
• The existing boiler plant was oversized by 10 per cent, and with the replacement boilers, this can be reduced to just 3 per cent, contributing to the savings without affecting performance, so the system heat load is 655kW.

Using the same load profile throughout the heating season, we have prepared an estimate of savings using the new Fleet Vertical F250V-750 floor standing boiler. Using just three modules at 250kW each (installed condensing boiler plant 750kW), when operating at 80°C, like the original plant, will provide 675kW output, which is only 3 per cent oversize, achieving a closer load matching than the original plant.
 

*97 per cent efficiency is actually the gross seasonal efficiency for the new Fleet boilers and takes account of improvements to the boiler controls, so if additional sensors are fitted to the system to allow boilers to run at compensated temperatures, then this is the level of performance that can be achieved. If however the new boilers are to continue running at 80°C flow temperature, they will still be capable of achieving a 90 per cent gross efficiency, still significantly better than the old boilers at 80 per cent.

If you take a typical installed cost of new plant at around £44,000 and projected £17,166 annual energy saving costs, then you can see that the simple financial payback would be less than three years.

Reducing operational costs

By reducing the number of boiler modules from six to three, we have also reduced the lifetime operational cost of the boilers. The labour cost for servicing each module would be similar, so this is a direct operational saving. The load matching that was achieved by turning each of the six original 120kW boilers on or off in turn, is replaced with a far superior modulating boiler system, where each module is 250kW output (225kW at 80°C), but will modulate down to around 45kW, enabling the boiler to match the system load very closely, without over-shooting and wasting expensive energy.

Of course many users will be equally interested in reducing the environmental impact....

Boiler Refurbishment Carbon Savings

To demonstrate the carbon savings that can be made by upgrading your old boiler plant to fully modulating boilers we have produced the following calculations.
The results are impressive, on the basis of 39 per cent utilisation, 3418 hours over a full year and using the DEFRA carbon emission guidance factor for Natural Gas of 0.185 kg/kWh. We have prepared an estimate of carbon savings using the new Fleet Vertical F250V-750 floor standing boiler.
 

The Fleet boilers save 90,734kg CO₂ each year compared against the old boiler plant.

To find out how you could benefit from both environmental and economical savings by upgrading your boiler plant, talk to Hamworthy today. We can arrange for one of our technical sales managers to visit your location and conduct a site survey making advice and recommendations on the best solutions to match the requirements for your project.

Call 0845 450 2865 Email sales@hamworthy-heating.com  

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