An historic hotel in Scotland is reaping the benefits of a prolonged planning application to switch to renewable energy as it now enjoys significant annual savings of £15,000 on its energy bills, as well as the generation of income from the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive scheme – all thanks to a wood pellet boiler heating system from Organic Energy.

The Royal Dunkeld Hotel in Perthshire, Scotland, has been owned by Neil and Catriona Menzies for 15 years.  It has 25 bedrooms in the main building and a further eight twin rooms in a courtyard annex.   Those in the main building had been warmed for many years by electric heaters, whilst the remainder of rooms in the hotel and its additional buildings were managed via a mix of gas and electric.  However, with a strong awareness of the rapidly rising cost of both gas and electricity, Neil and Catriona started to consider options for reducing what was becoming a huge cost to the business.

Having attended a locally held event focused on renewables they were convinced that this was the route that they should pursue and so following advice from the Energy Savings Trust, it was decided that the most efficient way to cap energy costs would be to replace all the electric heaters in the bedrooms with water-heating radiators and run these off of a ÖkoFEN pellet burning energy box system.

With an interest-free loan from the Energy Savings Trust secured, Neil and Catriona set about working with local installer Perthshire Biofuels and Organic Energy, suppliers of the system, to refine the specifics for the needs of the hotel.

However, before work on the installation of the biomass boiler system could commence, planning permission was required and as Neil explains this caused unforeseen delays in the overall process: “Given that the Royal Dunkeld is a listed building and we were going to be using three existing parking spaces in the carpark, we had to seek planning permission.  However, in light of renewable energy being something actively encouraged we didn’t think this would be a problem.  This was perhaps a little optimistic of us and it took significantly longer than we had anticipated, but once we were given the go-ahead progress was very swift.”

The Menzies chose a system centred around two ÖkoFEN Pellematic PES56kW wood pellet boilers which are housed in a purpose built all-timber larch clad Energy Box, and as Andy Boroughs Managing director of Organic Energy, the UK’s sole distributor of the ÖkoFEN system explains, it was a wise choice: “The ÖkoFEN Pellematic wood pellet boiler represents the very latest in renewable, sustainable heating technology being both low in carbon dioxide emissions and extremely cost effective.  With its automated fuel supply, the system also includes an ash compression system, boiler frost protection and fully automated digital heating controls.”

Neil was certain from the outset that it was the right choice: “I’ve always been a big fan of Austrian engineering and once I looked at what this system could do I was sure that it would deliver on its promises.  Having a local installer in Perthshire Biofuels was also a benefit and the availability of an interest free loan from the Energy Savings Trust made a big difference too.”

Their confidence in the system was soon proven when the savings started to become apparent.  Annual heating costs have fallen by at least £15,000, and under the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), the hotel is now receiving an annual payment in the region of £15,800.

The annual repayments on the interest-free loan from the EST are £12,000, and on current estimates, Neil and Catriona plan to have the loan cleared within eight years although they will continue to receive the RHI payments after that – something which Neil believes will add to the marketability of the hotel should they ever decide to sell up in the future.

Concluding, Neil reflects on how he’d advise other hoteliers and business owners considering the move to renewable energy: “It has certainly been a learning curve making the move to renewable energy but one that I’m glad we took given the savings we’re already seeing and the long-term benefit it’ll bring to the hotel.  In hindsight I’d have approached the process slightly differently, ensuring we had planning permission before applying for the loan, but that’s behind us now and we’re very glad we decided to go renewable.”