Thursday 19th of July 2018 | Posted In: Generate, Comply

CHP operators… did you get your new CHPQA Certificate in time?

This year FEC Energy completed a record number of 38 Combined Heat and Power Quality Assurance (CHPQA) annual submissions for sites ranging from 50kW to 9,000kW for both natural gas and biomass Combined Heat and Power (CHP). We made sure that they all received their CHPQA Certificate before the 30 June deadline.

Why is it important?

If you do not have your 2017 CHPQA Certificate by 30 June 2018, you can no longer claim the benefits that it brings.

For natural gas fuelled CHP these benefits include:

  • Less Climate Change Levy (CCL) payable on the gas used
  • Less CCL payable on the electricity generated

For example, for a 1MW CHP, the saving on gas CCL alone can be worth over £20,000 per year.

For biomass CHP it is all about the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI):

  • No CHPQA certificate = no RHI income from the biomass CHP tariff

However, certificate received does not equal ‘job done’ for another year. Far from it, in fact, CHPQA have already issued letters saying sites may be subject to an audit. So now is the time to make sure you are confident that everything is okay. For example, are your meter calibrations up to date?

What we would recommend…

Read your meters every month and work out what they are telling you:

  • Average kW fuel input, electricity and heat output
  • Efficiencies

This will tell you if your CHP is operating as efficiently as it should be, or if a meter has stopped working. It can be quite a challenge to do your annual CHPQA submission if a meter hasn’t been working for the last six months.

How can we help?

We offer our CHPQA certification service as a one-off service or as part of our Energy Account Management service. The CHPQA service includes:

  • Review of your CHPQA documentation
    • Meter schedule and calibration status
    • Schematics
  • Site visit
    • Often to fill in any gaps identified above
  • Meter reading
    • Create bespoke meter reading templates
    • Send reminders each month
  • Analysis and reporting
    • Produce a monthly CHP performance report
  • Annual submission
    • The easy part if all of the above is done
  • Attend CHPQA Audits
    • Individual sites might only be audited once every few years so it can be daunting for the inexperienced
    • We attend audits every year so we know what to expect

Call Andrew on 024 7669 8899 for more information.