As heating oil prices rise, a Bethel-based company that sells wood-pellet boilers is guaranteeing pellet delivery for the next three years at a price equivalent to $1.99 a gallon for heating oil.

One catch: Customers must buy the company’s pellet boilers.

Maine Energy Systems said Thursday that it will lock in a pellet price of no more than $239 a ton for bulk delivery through June of 2014. The offer is good for the first 1,000 customers in Maine and New Hampshire who install the company’s boilers.

The company’s Northeast Affordable Heat program is available to customers within 150 road miles of Bethel and 60 road miles of Ashland. The program will deliver pellets from four Maine manufacturers: Corinth Wood Pellets, Geneva Wood Fuels, Maine Woods Pellets and Northeast Pellets.

“When most people think of pellet heat, they think of stoves and bags of pellets,” said Harry “Dutch” Dresser, the company’s managing director. “Maine Energy Systems boilers replace oil- or gas-fired boilers and tie in with existing forced hot water systems, with significantly lower fuel costs.”

An average system costs about $13,000 before installation, Dresser said. If heating oil stayed at its current average price of $3.37 a gallon, the investment would take three to five years to pay for itself, he said.

Maine Energy Systems has boiler systems operating in homes, schools, municipal buildings and commercial buildings. In those systems, pellet fuel is delivered in bulk and fed into the boilers automatically.

The program has minimum pellet quantity requirements, and the fuel price guarantee is only for use in new installations of Maine Energy Systems equipment. Some other restrictions apply.

Staff Writer Tux Turkel can be contacted at 791-6462 or at:

tturkel@pressherald.com

 

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