Biovakka is a small company in South-Western Finland, which built the first large-scale and centralized biogas plant which is able to process different raw materials in this country. Their second power plant went online in the end of 2008, and further biogas power plants are currently being planned, so the company is well on track to bring financially viable and sustainable energy solutions to Finland and surrounding countries.
biogas
Biogas From Biovakka
Voxstone: Set Up The Global VoxTrac Sales Network in 2010
Voxstone CEO Tommi Peltomäki was invited to pitch in Lahti last week. Voxstone, a spin-off from VTT has developed and patented VoxTracs , which are acoustic measuring devices that accurately monitor gas flows in industrial applications. VoxTrac (in the picture) can also make measurements in difficult conditions, which existing electronic technologies cannot do realiably. In addition to making it possible to optimize the biogas production process, proper monitoring can also lead to energy savings. When used to measure and optimize compressed air production in industrial facilities, the energy costs savings can be €10 – 20k annually. Tommi and his team have been developing the product since 2008. Their next step is to set up a sales network in the EU, Asia and the USA to accelerate revenue growth with a target of increasing net profits by 30% – 40% by 2011. Continue reading »
Biogas Feed-In Tariff Kicks Biower Onto A Growth Path
Finland recently introduced the national goal of increasing the share of renewable energy to 60 per cent of total energy consumption. That is okay but the most important fact I think, is that Finland will finally introduce a set of financial and tax incentives to promote the development and piloting of clean technologies. It is time to walk the talk. For Finnish startups, it is essential to have opportunities for pilot references in their home market to enable further growth abroad.
Finland’s plan to introduce a biogas feed-in tariff is moving forward: the target price for the biogas feed-in tariff is €83.5 per MWh for power production and €50 per MWh when utilizing CHP (combined heat and power). According to the plan, this would only concern plants that produce more than 300 KVA of electricity. This supports fairly large plant sizes, which exceed the suggested parameters and provide adequate return on investments.
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BioWaz – Energy From Waste
We told you already about wind, solar and tidal-energy technologies, so now its time to go down and get dirty. Biowaz from Norway offers a biogas plant, and their target customers are farms and agricultural businesses. That might seem awfully far away from being Cleantech, though if you know that over 49% of European Union subsidies go into the agricultural sector – that were close to EUR 50 billion in 2006 – you might realize that there is a huge market.
The concept is as easy as it is beautiful: Farms, especially livestock farms, produce huge amounts of organic waste and manure. The manure and organic waste are usually collected in storage tanks, and might be used as class B fertilizers on fields. However, this “garbage” has more potential. It can, through the process of anaerobic digestion, be transformed into biogas, which consists of approximately 60% methane gas. The methane gas can be used to produce heat and electricity, or as fuel in cars. Continue reading »
Feed-in Tariff For Biogas To Be Introduced In Finland?
There has been talk a feed-in tariff for biogas (and wind) will finally be introduced in Finland. Biogas plants convert biological waste into energy and producer power, heat and/or fuel. The earning logic of a typical biogas plant is based on port fees, power & heat production and end-products like composting material. In Finland, the feed-in tariff for biogas plants has been on the environmental agenda since 2007.
According to the (as yet unconfirmed) rumours, the planned target price for the biogas feed-in tariff is 83.5 euros per MWh for power production (which equals the planned feed-in tariff for wind power in Finland) and around 30-40 euros per MWh for heating. In this system, a biogas producer is assured a certain long term (15-20 years) guaranteed price. We do not yet know if there are plans to introduce feed-in tariffs for other biogas-based fuels, for example those used to run motor vehicles.
Biovakka Suomi Oy 
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