Pleasant View Cuts Heating Costs, Earns Grant

Pleasant View Cuts Heating Costs, Earns Grant

New Hampshire grower Pleasant View Gardens is installing a brand new biomass burner and boiler to heat a portion of its Pembroke location. In the process, it earned a $500,000 grant to do it. The grant came from the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Loans and Grants program.

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The biomass burner, which will burn wood chips, will cut the grower’s oil use to zero and potentially cut heating costs by 85 percent. The burner cost $2 million to install and will drop the total amount of oil used at Pleasant View’s two facilities by half–from 600,000 gallons for both locations to 350,000 gallons burned at the Loudon location.

“Given drastic increases in heating costs, we knew it was time to make a move–alternate power was a natural choice for us,” says Henry Huntington, president of Pleasant View Gardens. “With oil prices on the rise, the proof is in the numbers. At this point when you see a four-year payback or less, to me that’s a no-brainer.”

Pleasant View was faced with a $3.50 per gallon of No. 2 oil and a $1 million fuel bill at Pembroke alone, which prompted the investigation into alternate fuel power options. They chose a Hurst biomass burner and boiler with a reciprocating grate system. Now, Pleasant View will pay just $150,000 for the 4,200 tons of wood chips to heat the facility annually.

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To receive the grant, Pleasant View formed a five-person internal committee and worked with a grant-writing firm, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and vendors to prepare the proper documentation. As a result, Pleasant View earned the largest grant of its kind the industry has ever seen.

For more information about Pleasant View or the biomass burner, be sure to check out a more in-depth article written by Joli Hohenstein in our upcoming February 2009 issue. Visit www.pwpvg.com for more on Pleasant View Gardens.

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