The current number of biogas stations in the Czech Republic is 228 with the total installed electric capacity of 112 MW (source czba.cz). Several tens of new installations are in preparation as these projects are economically profitable thanks to public support of the electricity feed-in tariff (in 2010 about 0,16 €/kWh) and often also thanks to government investment subsidies of up to 30 % of capital costs. The farmers experiencing losses in cattle breeding find the construction of biogas plants as a way to divert a part of the production of crops to generating electricity rather than milk and meat. Therefore, biogas production and its use in cogeneration units is currently drawing more and more attention.

Most of the biogas plants are built in locations optimized for the transport of the input substrates (mainly corn silage) and have no possibility to utilize the heat generated as the by-product of electricity (except for the small part used for heating the fermentors). As a consequence, a large part of energy produced from biogas has to be wasted into the atmosphere.

The ways to bring the heat from the biogas plant to the customers are in principle the following:

1. Standard hot water line is economically feasible only for small distances up to 1 – 2 km and requires existing infrastructure on the demand side (one significant consumer or heating network). Such opportunities are rare but not negligible; a possible solution for existing biogas plants could be inviting new businesses requiring heat in hot water to be established in the close vicinity.

2. Relocating the cogeneration capacity close to the heat consumption and supply of biogas by a piping. The installation costs of the biogas piping are much smaller and practically without energy losses (compared to relatively large heat losses of a long hot water line). The biogas plant is equipped with a small cogeneration unit with the capacity matching the self consumption. Another bigger unit (>80% of total capacity) is installed in a location optimized for heat supply. The additional costs have a good payback thanks to additional revenues form heat sale and also the customers profit from the lower heat price compared to heat production from natural gas. This concept has been successfully realized in Czech Republic for the first time in Trebon, South Bohemia, and the project is in operation since end 2009. The biogas piping is about 4 km long and the cogeneration unit is located in the spa facility. Another project with similar concept is in preparation.

3. Upgrading of biogas to natural gas quality and injection to the public distribution system. Upgrading technology is technically well proven, with a number of plants in operation. Most of the previous projects supplied the purified biogas (biomethane) to the filling stations for public transport, grid injection projects are built only recently, mainly in Germany. According to a recent study of a concrete potential upgrading project carried out by SEVEn, the current legal conditions for grid injection in the Czech Republic are less advantageous compared to standard electricity production at the biogas plant. The realization would require significant investment subsidy on the side of the investor or willingness of gas purchaser to pay a higher price for biomethane compared to natural gas. Notwithstanding, the chances of project realization in near future seem good.

SEVEn in the framework of COACH Bioenergy is trying to promote these possibilities for increasing energy efficiency of biogas plants so that they find its way into concrete projects. SEVEn’s activities include on one hand providing technical assistance to relevant state authorities (namely the Energy Regulatory Office and the Ministry for Industry and Trade) to establish proper motivation for such projects, and on the other hand assessing concrete projects of biogas plants with the objective to persuade the stakeholders to modify the project concepts in favour of the above models.