The plant, consisting of three biomass boilers in Cavalese, feeds the district heating network, with a total of 617 utilities installed between 1999 and 2020. The biomass plant is integrated with a high-yield cogeneration that can generate the electricity needed for the plant’s self-consumption and with a system of fossil methane gas emergency boilers. The biomass operating thermal power is 13.5 MW, while the emergency power is 8 MW.
In the municipality of Cavalese in Val di Fiemme, Trentino, a biomass-powered district heating plant is located whose energy comes from the processing waste of local sawmills and carpentry, which today replaces more than 3,500,000 liters of diesel and produces electricity and thermal energy distributed through local networks. This cogeneration plant amounts to 1 MW electric and to 23 MW thermal. The BioEnergia Group holds other production facilities in Trentino where anaerobic digestion is carried out for the treatment of organic fraction, capable of producing renewable electricity and high quality compost. On the roof of the plant is located a photovoltaic system that can meet some of the power plant’s electrical energy needs, and provides excess power to the local grid.
As virtuous example of the interaction between quality architecture and sustainable processes linked to the biomass-energy supply chain, the building constitutes the expansion of the old existing power plant. Managed by Bioenergia Fiemme, a public company whose members, besides the Municipality, are the Comunità di Fiemme (Community of Fiemme) as owner of the woods, the sawmills that work on the territory, the citizens as users of heat and the Cassa Rurale di Fiemme (Rural Fund of Fiemme). The thermal energy produced is distributed to the domestic users of the town of Cavalese, while the electric energy is distributed by the municipality, owner of the electricity network.
