HPBA 2020 Expo showcases all new stoves to smaller audience

Jack Goldman, right, opens the 2020
Expo in New Orleans.

Updated, April 9, 2020: The hearth industry’s annual marketplace for manufacturers and retailers concluded on March 14^th, a half a day early in New Orleans amidst a dwindling crowd and growing concern about the spread of Covid-19. This was the first hearth industry gathering since the late 1980s in which virtually all the stoves and boilers on the floor were newly redesigned and tested to meet stricter emission standards.  

Some manufacturers were clearly proud of what they felt were genuinely cleaner stoves while others were unconvinced or cynical of the new standard’s impact in the real world. 

Mark Shmorhun of the DOE's
Biotechnology office
attended the Expo to talk to
manufacturers about R&D
funding needs.

Due to Coronavirus concerns, Travis and Jotul, two large manufacturers, pulled out at the last minute, leading to a notably smaller Expo. U.S. Stove, having dropped their HPBA membership, decided not to attend this year, presumably because their inability to meet the 2020 emission standards on most of their appliances weakened their position in the hearth industry.  US Stove has 18 stove models that are 2020 compliant but no 2020 compliant furnaces yet, an area it had once domoniated.  US Stove responded to this blog, saying they are well positioned to move forward with a broad range of new and exciting products.

From the perspective of the Alliance for Green Heat, the 2020 Expo showcased several notable trends, some encouraging and others troubling.  

Vesta gives Best in Show award to an automated wood stove

Possibly the biggest highlight for AGH was seeing automated stoves take more of a foothold in the marketplace. Napoleon’s Eco Smart wood stove won Best in Show at the Vesta Awards, marking the first time that an automated stove won a Vesta Award.  The stove has an optical sensor that monitors particulate matter and can continually adjust air settings to produce a cleaner burn. According to Napoleon, the automation will only add $300 to the price and they expect the complete system with stove to retail for about $2,500. The stove also connects to the Napoleon cloud via the user's smart phone so they can monitor combustion conditions. The user can also allow the company to log data from the stove, providing a valuable record of how the stove runs. The stove is not yet EPA certified, but should be within months. 

The Charnwood Skye 2700, expected to
retail for about $3,300, several hundred
more than its non-automated cousin.

Charnwood, a British manufacturer, also was a finalist in the Vesta award, with their Skye E2700, also an automated stove that does much of what the Napoleon does, but with different technology.  Charnwood will be entering the US market for the first time later this year with this stove. Hugh Wells, head of the Britsh company told AGH, "We are very excited about this product because it does revolutionise how we burn wood by taking out user error." CFS-Teco did the certication testing in Portland and it achieved 78% efficiency, the highest of any non-cat. 

SBI should also have an automated stove on the market within a year, and MF Fire had their automated Catalyst on display at the Expo and have another one in development.  Maxitrol also exhibited a prototype of an automated stove and says that they are taking off in Germany.  Napoleon also won a second Vesta award for their novel "Heat & Cool Electric Fireplace," a mini-split heat pump housed in an electric fireplace.  

2020 stove trends

The 2020 NSPS has resulted in many more catalytic and hybrid stove models. AGH is particularly

Larry Brockman from the EPA's
voluntary Burn Wise program
talks the MF Fire staff about their
automated stove.

happy to see more hybrid models as they help reduce start-up smoke and provide back-up secondary combustion if the operator does not engage the catalyst. A more unnoticed trend is the rapid adoption of the ASTM E3503 cordwood test method. Data from the EPA list of stoves shows the average grams per hour for cordwood tested stoves is 1.6 grams – the exact same average for crib tested stoves. About 45% of all 2020 certified wood stoves were tested with the ASTM cordwood method, which reportedly has more flexibility in its parameters making it easier for manufacturers to pass the certification test. Nearly all of the smaller non-cat stoves were tested with cordwood. Quite a few very affordable stoves that sell primarily in big box and hardware stores are passing the 2020 standards, and some stoves barely had to undergo any redesign.  

A sophisticated, lower priced electronic precipitator

ESPs for wood stoves, considered
far-fetched just a few years ago, are
improving rapidly and popular in
Germany and Switzerland. 

Danish manufacturer Enervex brought a self-cleaning electronic precipitator, known as an ESP. They are commonly used by factories and restaurants, but now small and affordable enough for residential applications. ESPs are a type of scrubber that uses static electricity to remove particulate matter from exhaust fumes before the particulates exit the smokestack. Enervex’s innovation is to design a residential ESP that is self-cleaning, often a big problem, and to bring the price down. They expect theirs will sell for $1,200- $1,600 when it comes on the US market. There is a quickly growing market for them in Germany, now that they are recognized by the country's eco-label, Blue Swan, and some cities may require them. OekoSolve, a Swiss company, made the ESP being tested in Fairbanks.

HPBA recruits Appalachia Service Project to take 2015 stoves in May

To address the fate of potentially hundreds of wood stoves that are 2015 certified but not allowed to be sold after May 15, 2020, HPBA negotiated with the EPA to allow retailers to donate stoves to a non-profit who can them install them. HPBA is teaming up with the Christian ministry Appalachia Service Project, based in Tennessee, who repairs homes in Central Appalachia, making them warmer,

AGH President John Ackerly with
Adam Bean of the Appalachia
Service Project

safer, and drier. At the Expo, AGH met with Adam Bean, Home Repair Coordinator for the group, who is quickly learning about wood stove installations and trying to estimate how many stoves his group has the capacity to install, which will partly depend on securing donated NFI installing and training.

Pellet stoves out of the limelight

Even though pellet stoves were relatively easy to redesign and test at 2 grams an hour or lower, the market for pellet stoves has not been particularly good and there were not many on the Expo floor. There were no pellet stove finalists in the Vesta Awards, which may indicate a pause in innovation in the North American market.

EPA announces final NSPS rule during Expo

On the first day of the conference, the EPA formally announced that they would not allow a retailer sell-through. The EPA had said on October 15, 2019 that entities should follow the compliance dates but some felt that there was still a chance for a sell-through. HPBA expressed its disappointment in a written statement while the Pellet Fuel Institute claimed a victory because the EPA removed minimum requirements from pellet fuel while retaining the prohibition that pellet fuel must not contain any of the prohibited fuels listed in the 2015 NSPS. There remains considerable debate about whether the 5-year timeline would have been enough if manufacturers had started redesigning and testing to the 2020 standards early in the process. Key excerpts of the EPA ruling provide detailed insight into why the EPA did not allow a sell-through. Some did start early and began offering 2020 compliant models to their retailers as soon as 2018, while most did not start releasing 2020 models until 2019 or even this year.  The issue was far more complicated because manufacturers had large inventories of 2015 stoves and some needed the cooperation of retailers to buy their 2015 inventory well into 2019. An HPBA mailer to retailers in 2019 said: “retailers and distributors should NOT immediately stop buying anything that doesn’t meet Step 2” in part because there wasn’t enough variety and in part because manufacturers still needed revenue from sales of their 2015 inventory.

EPA holds 3-day wood smoke workshop

One of the main reasons AGH attends the annual HPBA Expo is to participate in workshops

The wood smoke workshop brought
scores of experts from across the US
to share new knowledge, tactics and
success stories.

organized by the EPA on wood smoke reduction strategies. This year the workshop was coordinated and supported by EPA's Burn Wise, the Western States Air Resources Council (WESTAR), the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM) and National Tribal Air Association (NTAA) and was going to be the largest one ever, with nearly 100 federal, state, local and tribal participants registered.  But some states like Washington banned their employees from travel and many other participants cancelled, leaving a group of about 60. The workshop mainly consisted of a series of talks and powerpoints about change out programs, cord wood test methods, the impact of the NSPS, DOE funding opportunities for stove R&D, retrofits and ESPs, low cost consumer air quality sensors, indoor air quality issues, addressing wood smoke complaints, etc. Most of the powerpoints can be dowloaded here. AGH also hosted a gumbo and etouffee networking reception on Frenchman Street for all the participants. 

The 2021 HPBA Expo is scheduled for March 4-6 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Blue Angel ecolabel requires wood stoves with automated air controls

Blue Angel, the German government equivalent of the US Energy Star label, approved a new eco-label for wood stoves that includes stoves with automated air control, “separating technologies” such as electrostatic precipitators and the ability to meet strict emission standards.

The Blue Angel label is also part of a trend that is exploring and adopting test procedures that more closely resembles how stoves are used in homes.  The label emerged in part from lessons learned by the BeReal initiative that involved extensive round-robin testing in multiple European countries. The Clean Heat initiative is promoting the label to help towns and cities to reduce air pollution.

Marius Wohler of BeReal presents
findings at Brookhaven National Lab
 in 2016

The label gives a boost to efforts by the Alliance for Green Heat which has worked with American state and federal agencies and American stove manufacturers to develop automated stove technology and bring them to the US market.

German Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said in a press statement that "The Blue Angel standard for stoves for wood is a real step forward. The authorities can now take more effective action against particulate matter pollution, for example by only allowing the operation of stoves bearing the eco-label.”

Blue Angel says that cities and municipalities are introducing regional bans on conventional stoves (ban on the use of these stoves and ban on installing these devices in new housing developments) but there would be exceptions for those appliances holding the Blue Angel label. The city of Berlin has expressed interest in using the ecolabel.

Maria Krautzberger, President of the Federal Environment Agency said “With the Blue Angel requirements that have now been decided upon, we are showing that it is possible to go even further [to make wood stoves clean]. This boosts innovation in the industry, gives guidance to consumers and is good for our air".

SBI won an award for their automated
stove design and will be launching a series
of automated stoves in North America

The label is voluntary for manufacturers, as a number of other European eco-labels, but this one is stricter than others. Several European countries have developed eco-labels for wood stoves with varying degrees of success. The US Energy Star program has never covered wood stoves and US stove industry blocked an initiative by Washington State to explore a state-led label. The Alliance for Green Heat has been an advocate for ecolabels and urges stakeholders in the US to revisit the idea.

It is not yet known how many stoves will qualify for the label over the coming months and years, and how well they will work in the field. Automated stoves gained some visibility in the United States through the Wood Stove Design Challenge and subsequently the Department of Energy provided $3 million in funding for automated stove R&D in 2019 and are now offering an additional $5 million in 2020.

Electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) have long been used in commercial wood burning applications, and their use in residential applications has grown rapidly in Europe. In the US, an initiative in Alaska is using ESPs, and is hoping a review by the EPA will determine that change out funding can be used on a wider scale to install ESPs on wood stoves.  As prices come down under $2,000 the cost of adding an ESP may result in far more PM reductions than replacing an old stove.

This ESP made by Swiss
company Oekosolve was
also showcased by AGH
in Wash. DC in 2018.

Excerpts of the details of the Blue Angel label are reproduced below. The full criteria can be found here.

Excerpts

The environmental label may be awarded to stoves that use the fuel … in an efficient manner and have significantly lower pollutant emissions. In addition to the statutory regulations for the type testing process [lab testing of a sample stove] for the stoves, the special requirements stipulated by the Blue Angel mean that stoves have to comply with significantly lower particulate and CO limit values and this must also be verified during the ignition [start-up] phase that involves a particularly high level of emissions. In the case of organic gaseous carbon (OGC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), emissions of these substances must already be below the limits defined in the EU Ecodesign requirements that will be generally applicable from January 2022.

When purchasing a new innovative stove, the environmental label will thus act as a decision- making aid for the reduction of air pollutants. It is a voluntary label that is designed to motivate manufacturers to develop efficient and low- emission heating appliances. The label will allow manufacturers to highlight the environmental benefits offered by their heating appliance in a simple way.

Therefore, the following benefits for the environment and health are stated in the explanatory box:

3.1 Emission requirements

Stoves, where relevant in combination with an integrated or downstream particle separator, must comply with the maximum limits stated in Table 1, Column 3 for the particle content, carbon monoxide (CO), organic gaseous carbon (OGC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The particle count concentration must be determined (see Appendix C for the measurement method). In addition, the limit for the particle count concentration stated in Table 1, Column 3 must also be observed from 01/01/2022.

The requirements can be complied with in two ways:

1. a) Testing the overall system

The requirements will have been fulfilled if the mean values from the individual measurements described in Appendix B that were carried out on the tested stove, including all of the intended fixtures and attachments, do not exceed the relevant limits specified in Table 1, Column 3.

Spare parts are those parts which, typically, may develop a fault within the scope of the ordinary use of a product. Whereas those parts which normally exceed the life of the product are not to be considered as spare parts.

2. b) In combination with an efficient particle separator

§ The requirements will have been fulfilled if the mean values from the individual measurements described in Appendix B that were carried out on the stove do not exceed the relevant limits specified in Table 1, Column 4 and the stove is sold and installed together with a particle separator. For particle separators, a minimum separating efficiency of 75% of the particle mass and (from 01/01/2022) 90% of the particle count must be verified. The limit value in Table 1, Column 3 must be complied with reliably when taking into account the separating efficiency.

§ If a particle separator for which this minimum separating efficiency has been verified is already integrated into a chimney, the manufacturer can also sell the stove without the separator. The fact that the stove must be installed together with the associated particle separator that is integrated into the chimney must be indicated during the sale of the product and also in the installation instructions. The particle separator integrated into the chimney must already have been named and tested when submitting the application for the stove.

The measurement of the flue gas temperature, the flue gas sampling process and the measurement of the static pressure for the stove must be completed in a measurement circuit according to DIN EN 16510-1:2018-01 (D), Section A.2.3 as well as Diagrams 13 and 14 of this standard.

The measurement uncertainty stated in the test method is neither added nor subtracted.

3.11 Future revision of the environmental label

Furthermore, the revision will examine whether the applicant can offer a 5-year guarantee for the secondary reduction technology if it is sold in combination with the stove. 

To determine the particle count emissions from stoves, it has only been possible up to now to evaluate individual test results using the methods described in Appendix C. Round robin tests that could be used as the basis for defining a limit for the particle count emissions from the stove have not been available. 

Nevertheless, the measurement of the particle count in accordance with the new methods is being introduced as an obligatory requirement. Due to the unavailability of round robin tests, it is necessary to allow a transition period for the introduction of the particle count limit. Compliance with the particle count limit will be obligatory for the award of the Blue Angel from 01/01/2022. 

3.4 Air regulation

To ensure that the user has as little influence over the emissions as possible, it is not permitted for the air supply to be manually adjustable during intended operation. This is usually achieved through the automatic regulation of the air supply.

3.5 Combustion monitor

A display must be provided for the user to indicate any deviation from the optimal operating state and to request that the user stokes the fire with wood.

3.8.1 Repairability and provision of spare parts

The stove must be designed so that it can be repaired by replacing individual parts that are no longer working. The applicant undertakes to guarantee the provision of spare parts for the repair of the appliances for at least 10 years following the termination of production.

The product documentation must include information about the repairability and the guaranteed supply of spare parts.

3.8.2 Recyclable design

In terms of the recyclable design of those appliances issued with the environmental label, the following is valid:

· The appliances must be designed in such a way that they can be dismantled and separated into recyclable materials by specialist companies using standard tools or that this process is simplified by intelligently designed connections.

· The appliances must be designed so that it is possible to separate metals into single materials and, where possible, recycle them separately.

3.10.3 Quick user guide

· In addition, another guide covering a maximum of two pages must be provided that includes the most important instructions for the fuel to be used (size of the pieces, max. water content, quantity) for the ignition process, controlling the air flow, stoking the fire and cleaning/maintenance in a clearly visible and easy to understand form. This quick user guide must be permanently legible and abrasion-resistant and must not suffer from discolouration during normal use.

· The instructions must include easy to understand illustrations

5. Use of the Environmental Label

The use of the Environmental Label by the applicant is governed by a contract on the use of the Environmental Label concluded with RAL gGmbH.

Contracts on the Use of the Environmental Label are concluded to fix the terms for the certification of products under Paragraph 2. Such contracts shall run until December 31, 2023. They shall be extended by periods of one year each, unless terminated in writing by March 31, 2023 or March 31 of the respective year of extension.

Related stories

Alaska building list of cleaner, properly certified wood and pellet stoves (Oct. 2020)

The US needs an eco label for wood and pellet heaters (Dec. 2018)