Finning UK & Ireland (Finning), sole distributor of Caterpillar engines in the UK, has been highly commended at the 2016 British Renewable Energy Awards for its work supporting a first-of-its-kind project to produce carbon-neutral power from used cooking oil.

Finning was nominated in the Project of the Year category for supplying equipment and operational support to REG Bio-Power (REG) at its site in Whitemoor, North Yorkshire. The innovative project uses ten Finning Cat 3516 BHD engines that run on a fuel created from used cooking oil.

Now in its eleventh year, the British Renewable Energy Awards celebrate some of the most innovative and ground breaking individuals, organisations, and products that have advanced the progress of renewable energy in the UK.

Jason Harryman, National & Key Account Manager at Finning says: “The field was excellent this year and we’re proud to have our work highly commended by the judges. Everybody on the team should feel incredibly proud of themselves.

“While the engines supplied to REG by Finning are standard off-the-shelf units the fuel system was specially designed to reliably operate with of REG’s LF100 fuel. This reliability is of prime importance as the Whitemoor site has been contracted to supply the UK’s Short-Term Operating Reserve (STOR) programme, which is designed to supply the National Grid with enough power to cope with unexpected spikes in demand.

“Congratulations to Solarsense for taking home Project of the Year, and to the Renewable Energy Association for putting on an excellent awards event with so many exciting entries.”

The site itself is unmanned most of the time, with the control system being remotely managed by Finning. When the generators need to be started up, Finning engineers can run them from a central control room and let REG know that the operation was successful.

The engines need to start on demand and must also go off load at a set time, or REG may be subject to significant penalties. With this in mind, before the design was even finalised Finning carried out extensive tests to ensure that the engines could reliably and safely run on the LF100 fuel for an extended period.

The Whitemoor site has been supported by Finning engineers right from the start, who assisted REG with its planning and environmental compliance. Finning has also agreed an operation and maintenance contract with REG that will last until 2022, covering not just the engines but also the site’s boilers, pumps and high voltage equipment.

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