BETHEL — Maine Energy Systems of Bethel is hoping technological advances will move more people to wood pellet fuel.
On Friday, the company received a new truck, built by Trans Tech in Brewer, that uses a pneumatic system to deliver a standard load of pellets- about 3 to 4 tons, into customers’ homes and businesses in less than 5 minutes.
Growth has slowed for Maine’s fuel-pellet industry. With the price of heating oil down to about $2.80 a gallon, consumers aren’t converting with the urgency they were in 2008, when a gallon of oil cost more than $4. Local pellet and furnace dealers are hoping that turns around.
Bill Bell, executive director of the Maine Pellet Fuels Association, said his group doesn’t track the number of burners purchased or pellets sold, but he said he’s seen a slowdown. He recalls that in 2008, pellet dealers were telling customers to “please be patient. There’ll be enough pellets for everybody once we get through the back orders.”
Bell said some people may have bought pellet stoves as secondary heating systems when oil was high but went back to oil heating.
Still, according to Harry “Dutch” Dresser, director of Maine Energy Systems, wood pellets at current prices provide the same amount of heat as oil costing $1.96 a gallon.
Dresser sells central heating systems with pellet boilers, which are more popular than oil heating in much of Western Europe. His company, which he co-founded with Les Otten and Bill Strauss, builds and sells systems designed by the Austrian company Okofen.
He said the systems he sells are as convenient as oil-burning systems, with trucks that deliver pellets into homes through a hose and a mechanism that automatically feeds pellets into the boiler for a constant temperature. The boilers automatically flush out ashes but need a professional cleaning once a year and owners must empty an ash bin, which can be poured into a garden, a few times a year.
Although the cost of fuel is less, initially buying a pellet burner is about 40 percent more expensive than a comparable oil burner, Dresser said. The storage bin is larger as well. It’s larger than an oil tank at about 6½ feet on every side, although one model is made of wood and fabric and can be quickly assembled in a basement.
According to Dresser, many of his customers are businesses and government buildings, where long-term operating costs are given a lot of thought. Gould Academy buildings use pellet heat, and the Oxford County Commission recently got a grant to convert the courthouse to wood pellet heat. That work is expected to begin in 2011.
Bell said about 20,000 Mainers a year replace their wood stoves or central heating boilers. “We’re working with Efficiency Maine in the hope that a substantial number of those 20,000 whose oil burner is on their last legs will take a look at a pellet system instead.”
“People need to know they can get home delivery, it’s just as easy as oil and it smells better,” Bell said.
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