The plant built by Enel for Luxottica has been out of order for a year now. The supplying forest company must divert the material around Italy
AGORDO. Of the three words, electricity, hot and cold, used in September four years ago by Enel and Luxottica in presenting the biomass trigeneration plant built in Valcozzena di Agordo, only the last one remains. From 10 October 2020, the power plant that ensured almost all of the energy needs of the Luxottica plant in Agordo does not work and the biomass produced in the Agordina valley and destined for the plant instead ends up in Ravenna and Catania.
Thanks to a power of 199 electric kilowatts and 1.2 thermal megawatts, the plant satisfied 40% of the thermal needs and 60% of the refrigeration needs of the plant which is a few meters away, allowing for the first time the use of ” renewable heat ”from trigeneration for the production of eyewear and the reduction of fossil fuel consumption. In addition to thermal energy, the plant also supplied electricity.
To produce them was a boiler fueled with forest chips (500 tons per month) coming in the first two years also from outside the valley (from Slovenia), then, with the task of the Agordina firm Holz Mede, only from the valley.
In addition to bottom ash (10-20 kilos per ton) that was disposed of as waste, the combustion generated compressed hot air that made a turbine run. The electricity produced (59kW) was fed into the grid. The fumes, on the other hand, encountered steam generating tubes. The operation thus allowed Luxottica to obtain both cold and hot water.
For a year now, this has no longer happened due to a system failure. In recent days, there would have been a new summit between Enel and Luxottica in which Leonardo Del Vecchio’s company would again ask for a decisive action to put the infrastructure back into operation.
The inauguration of the plant in 2017 was hailed as a significant step towards a more sustainable economy and production, with the use of wood as a resource. Now, however, the Agordina forest company Holz Mede, which has the contract for the supply to the plant, carries the wood chips around Italy instead of to Valcozzena di Agordo.
Also four years ago, on the occasion of the presentation of the power plant, Enel, through the director of the global e-solutions division, asked the then mayor Da Roit what he thought of the possibility of installing a charging column for electric cars in the following December. However, as confirmed by the Municipality of Agordo, this never materialized.