As well as the pellet and wood-burning stoves and boilers covered separately, biomass boilers can also be run using other biomass fuels such as grain, rapeseed and cereals, which are often cheaper than wood and have a high energy content.

Wood chip boilers

Boilers can be fuelled by wood chips, which are cheaper than pellets but more effective than logs as they are faster drying and enable more efficient and controlled combustion. Wood chip is widely used in many European countries as a fuel for heating, and can often be sourced more locally than pellets.

Combining with solar power

Biomass boilers can also be combined with Solar power, by integrating a solar hot water panel into the biomass boiler, so that at times when there is not enough solar energy to heat the water, the boiler will automatically take over.