LPG Off-grid Gas Supply - Calor Gas Ltd

Hi Good morning welcome to Callor Gas’s CPD presentation on LPG off-grid supply. My name’s Carl Bateman I’m Callor gas’ National Specifier manager. I’m going to spend the next 20 minutes/half an hour going our CPD presentation on LPG as an off-grid fuel.

Learning aims

So the learning aims of this presentation is:

• To promote off-grid energy solutions from LPG.
• What is LPG? Bio LPG? And LNG? Because we sell all of them and their benefits.
• To compare and contrast offgrid fuels that are available to your customers domestically or commercially.
• Tank siting requirements 
• Key legislations that are going to help incentivise to get an LPG installation in.

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What is LPG?

So, what is LPG? LPG is Liquefied Petroleum Gas, the two main forms of LPG are butane or propane. For the main purpose of this presentation will talk more around propane because Propane is what we deliver, in the big bulk tanks, in the big red bottles. 

Butane typically would have been in the old caravan market or the old domestic fires, but as times moved on with caravans, people would change summer to winter between propane and butane. Now we just use one regulator and use propane all year around. And again the other main difference is propane and butane freeze at different temperatures. Propane freezes a lot lower than butane, so can be used in the winter.

One key fact to take away from this slide in this bit of information is: one volume of liquid will give you 270 volumes of vapour. So the LPG is stored in a tank or a cylinder as a liquid as it comes out as a vapour, so if someone says they have a gas leak, they’ve lost a lot of gas. They would have lost a lot of gas as well because one volume is 270. LPG is growing in popularity throughout heating, cooking and hot water.

Us being the experts of Calor gas have actually been selling LPG for over 80 years and its the nearest thing you are going to get to natural gas in the off-grid arena. Now these three illustrations are the above ground tank, a crane delivering a below ground tank and actually below ground tank in the ground. As we go further through the presentation, I will give you more information regarding the tanks and site requirements.

Why LPG?

Well, LPG is the cleanest burning fossil fuel of a non-mains gas arena. Up to 20% less CO2 emitted than a heavy oil or oil, there is a cleaner burning fuel which i can mention further down the line which is bio LPG. They are versatile. You can heat, cook and cool or use for hot water and drying. We always put telemetry on our tanks which sends a signal to the satellite dish and tells us what you need, when you are due for a delivery, so you never run out and its treated like mains gas. So for you as a customer, you will always get your supply. Which takes us nicely onto the next point, continuity of supply.

We’ve got the network around the UK that will make sure that wherever you are in the country you’ll always have a gas supply. Any efficiency A rated LPG boiler is cheaper than oil boiler and comes through with all ranges. And we’ve got evidence to prove it. Anything, B rated boiler down installed will be cheaper than oil system. And then when you put an A rated boiler in, with the benefits of LPG and installation cost of oil, LPG will come out as the cheaper fuel.

So the infrastructure of LPG this is the national infrastructure of LPG. It’s either produced at  a refinery as i said there’s six within the UK  As you can see you’ve got Mossmoran up in Scotland. Immingham on the East Coast, Canvey Island, Fawley and coming up to South Wales you got Pembrokeshire. And go up to Stanlow and Belfast over in Northern Ireland. All they get imported now.

If we look at this map maybe 10 years ago most of LPG would have been coming in via by refineries, where LPG is a byproduct of crude oil. So when you crack crude oil, what’s left gets converted to LPG. But as the infrastructure has got bigger and more LPG has been required, it's being brought in these ships from different parts of the world. i.e. American, Middle Eastern or Russian and what have you, into the ports.

LPG vs Alternative fuels

So the next slide is demonstrating LPG versus other fuels and as I’ve already mentioned to you it is cheap, it is better and lower on CO2 fuel emissions. It is the cleanest burning fuel within a non-mains gas arena. If an LPG would leak and the tank and was cited correctly more than 3 metres from the trail there would be no issue, it would just disappear into the atmosphere.

Big things to look around oil, if it was an oil leak it would cause some pollution to the ground or water. LPG won't get that. So the average additional cost per building, as you can see, the added costs on top of a brand new build with LPG you looking just shy of £1000. All the other fuels, heating or electric or air source heat pump, are a lot higher.

A normal standing 3 bedroom large semi-detached, oil just under 4, air source heat pumps being just under 7. So if you are looking to build a new property the additional costs, LPG is a lot cheaper. And also the savings I mentioned within this slide stack, you get big benefits in that opportunity as well, compared to other fuels.

LPG vs Other Off-grid Fuels

The total cost of building a property, well, we at Calor have got a team called Metered estates. So if you got someone who’s building a lot of properties within the UK then this demonstrates 30 properties, 4 x five bedrooms, 8 x 4 bedrooms, 10 x 3 bedrooms and 8 x 2 bed terraces, we’ll put a thing in the ground, put some tanks in the ground called a metered estate and put ring right around it and put meters on each property.

This graphic demonstrates roughly how much it would cost to build those 30 houses in the offgrid arena. LPG again came out with the cheapest solution looking at roughly at about £500 per plot. Air source you’re looking at about £200,000 for the total. Oil, between £100-150,000, electric is just over £50,000. With LPG probably about £25,000.

Calor Gas Ltd Overview

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Calor at some point. We are the market leader in bulk sales of LPG, the big tanks and cylinders. Established in 1935 and we’ve been selling gas ever since. We currently provide energy to over 4.5 million customers and have licenses to deliver gas to the Royal estates. We are actually owned by a Dutch company called SHV Holdings who are a family run business based in Holland. And depending what time of the year you look, they are either the second richest or first richest family in Holland behind the Heineken family. So they're very very very important and they’ve a lot of credibility. They’ve got gas companies all over the world. Whether it be Brazil, France, Middle East, India and America. They are the largest downstream supplier of LPG in the world. Calor’s Overview similar to the map I showed you earlier, but this is our dedicated resource. When we talked about Immingham and Canvey, these are where we physically store LPG. We will probably get about 60% of our LPG needs from storage facilities where we bring ships into Canvey Island and then put them in our storage facilities within Immingham and Canvey island. The smaller green ones are COC (our customer operations centres). Thats where we fill cylinders put gas in the tankers and deliver. The Red ones are bulk depots where we have storage and we can deliver gas from those sectors. By Looking at that map. Wherever the customer may be in the country, Calor gas can deliver gas, because we've got the network around the country.

Location and Siting of above ground Tanks

As you can see these two different applications for an above ground tank. This is your typical factory or poultry farm on a comercial site with 5 x 4,000 litre tanks linked together. Or this is your bog standard domestic property with a 1,200 litre feeding the property. Now it is our job, our salesforce's job, to make sure we site the tanks correctly. We will come along and do a visit or we'll take your details over the phone. However, the most important facts to remember, there are siting distances.

So when you're in the early stages of a projects and you're doing plans and your going through your reports, you need to be factoring in the size of the tanks are at a distance where they need to be. The rule of thumb, is to remember, typically on domestic properties 3m from the building boundary fix or ignition. We also need to have line of sight for the driver at all times, so he can see where he's dropping the tank.