Budapest Forestry Company

Energy production

As a result of the decreasing energy reserves (coal, earth gas and mineral oil) as well as of the increasing energy prices, exploring and investigating the new energy sources as well as utilisation of the energy bases available now as economically as possible is becoming more and more important in Hungary like in other regions of the world.

Timber of the forest is one of the most important energy sources, or probably the most important one, which is continuously reproduced if traditional forest management is carried out. One possible way for utilisation of the timber, being not suitable for industrial process, is to produce heat energy by which significant part of the social demand can be fulfilled by application of  an environment-friendly technology.

The idea of the energy production motivated our company when in 1994 we decided to establish a caloric centre based on wood chips. The idea has successfully met the interests of the Military College in Szentendre. After a thorough preparation and quick implementation the caloric centre started to work in October 1995.

The company decided to extend the heat supply station and transform to a small thermal power station in 2003. By this way – while the heat supply remains unchanged – “green” electric current can be produced by utilisation of the bio mass. The small power station is of co-generation type because it makes possible to produce both the heat and electric current simultaneously. It started to work at the beginning of 2005.

In heating the waste timber from forest management and forest processing industry is used mainly. It shall be emphasized that the technology is environment friendly because no environment damaging waste materials form in the heating procedure and the remaining materials get beck into the rotation of the nature.

The heat capacity of the small power station is 9 MW; the electric current capacity is 1.3 MW which can meet the total energy requirement of a big Hungarian village by using the bio mass (cuttings, chips of wood and agricultural waste materials) produced in the surroundings.

The Company - and the professional staff having many decades’experiences – undertakes to organise and implement similar investments; to maintain and operate the established heating stations and small power stations and to supply them with fuel as well as to give advise.

The Company – for long term – has set itself the aim of extending its energy producing activity by utilisation of the bio mass and its implementation in the field of the vertical integration. Therefore a plantation is under establishment in area of some hundred hectares that will economically and continuously produce the bio mass as well as is used for developing and researching purposes, too.