Beauvais. In Saint-Jean, 10,000 tons of wood burned each year to heat the neighborhood

Since 2010, several social landlord buildings, private housing and public establishments (swimming pool, schools, gymnasium, etc.) in the Saint-Jean district of Beauvais (Oise) are heated with wood. If around fifty substations are scattered throughout the district, the energy comes from the large boiler room installed at the end of rue des Métiers. Every year, the company that manages it, BCSJ (Bois chaud Saint-Jean), organizes tours to show residents how it all works.

“It’s the NFB (National Forestry Office, editor’s note) who delivers the already shredded wood to us, we store it hereshows Yannick Huon, manager of BCSJ and major innovation project director at Cram, in the middle of a large warehouse filled with shredded wood. Sixteen trucks delivered to us last week. In low season, there are only two per week. The swimming pool, for example, needs to be heated all year round. In high season, it can go up to twenty. It all depends on the weather.»

Wood from forest maintenance or sawmill scrap

In total, these are 10,000 tons of wood which are burned each year in the boiler room. “It’s not cut woodreassures Yannick Huon. It comes from the maintenance of forests or sawmill scraps, or even from the maintenance of hedgerows. It comes from 80 km around Beauvais.” The shredded wood is then mixed to be uniform: the arrivals are not always the same. This avoids changing the boiler settings. Everything is automatically sent to the large boiler, which operates non-stop. “We bring in more or less depending on the power we want.», Specifies the manager of BCSJ.

The ashes are then collected. Those called “wet”, not suitable for combustion in boilers (nails, scrap metal, etc.) are transferred to skips. “Dry” ones are reused for spreading.

And if the wood boiler breaks down, which happens quite often, two oil boilers and one gas take over. “They are also used to vary temperaturesspecifies Baptiste Michaux, development expert at Cram. If there is a breakdown, if there is no more delivery, we must still provide heat. It is a public service, we do not have the right to interrupt the heat supply.»

A second boiler room planned for Argentina

Currently, the wood boiler room in the Saint-Jean district supplies a good part of the Saint-Jean plateau, the Bellier swimming pool at the penitentiary center, and the Jeanne-Hachette residence at the Saint-Esprit high school. And the network could expand further in the future. “For several years, we have seen that heat sales have been declining, notes Baptiste Michaux. The relationship with energy is changing. Today, we put on a sweater instead of pushing the thermostat to 21°C. All of this unlocks potential on the network. We could heat other buildings.»

Even more, a new boiler room should see the light of day in another district of the prefecture-city of Oise, in Argentina, under a slightly different model. The call for tenders is in progress. The boiler room should be built by 2027.