There are a lot of municipalities in Latvia focusing on efficiency. However, what’s interesting is that it’s small municipalities that devote a lot of thought to green management. According to EcoHeat Technologies, Ltd., which is the leading company in the Baltic States and one of the rare companies in the world to manufacture large capacity mobile/modular chip boiler houses, last year boilers were installed in Aloja and Skrīveri.
This year, similar boilers are coordinating heating at municipal sites in Dviete and Birzgale. If all the municipality is looking for is cheap and advantageous solutions that deliver a return on investment within a short space of time, are environmentally friendly and ensure stability, mobile heating boilers are being chosen more and more often.
Moreover, it is vital for small municipalities that people can pay for the service, the solution runs for a long time and the municipality is not required to invest a lot of resources on employees’ salaries and technical maintenance.
In many places it is the availability of workers that is a big challenge. Up to seven workers operate in the old firewood boiler houses. They prepare the fuel and ensure a continual supply of thermal energy. However, modular chip fuelled boiler houses are fully automated and do not require the presence of people on a daily basis. All that is required is for somebody to inspect them a couple of times a week. A visit takes no more than 20 minutes. Therefore, supervision of such boiler houses does not require more than two operators, who mostly supervise the site remotely and receive a notification on their smart device or computer if an emergency situation arises.
If an emergency arises or the equipment breaks down, both those persons responsible for the site and the manufacture receive a message, which enables them to identify the cause and location of the emergency. Upon arriving at the site, they immediately know which unit they should visit. Equipment operators are trained to deal with such situations and to carry out the required actions to ensure that the equipment continues working, albeit if only in manual mode until the consequences of the emergency have been dealt with in full, because the priority is always to maintain a continual supply of energy.
Usually the costs of resolving the consequences are insignificant, because the most common reasons for an emergency are sensor damage, a foreign body in the fuel supply or other minor damage, which can be rectified immediately upon arrival at the site.