Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) released at the end of 2013 indicate that biomass boilers, such as those installed by Energy 7, made up 92 percent of all newly installed capacity as businesses take advantage of the RHI and homeowners the RHPP.
Demand is expected to increase further for biomass once the domestic RHI is launched this spring. DECC is expecting 750,000 renewable heating installations to be completed by 2020 under both strands of the RHI.
“We have seen our Wood Pellet Boiler sales increase by133 per cent in 2013 compared to 2012, and the majority of these have been installations at commercial properties,” said 7 Energy’s managing director, Martin Dowley.
“Around 712MW of renewable heat has been installed by businesses under the non-domestic RHI and a further 106MW of capacity has been installed under the Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) household voucher scheme.
“We are expecting this trend in rising sales to accelerate in 2014, when the full domestic RHI scheme is launched which, like the existing business RHI, will provide households with payments based on the amount of renewable heat they generate.”
He added: “We are gearing up for a further increase in demand. We have had an extremely successful 2013 but 2014 could see a real upsurge in the number of domestic installations.”