Our History

PlanET (pronounced "plan-e-t") Biogas Solutions was incorporated in October, 2006. PBS is a Joint Venture between Martin Lensink and PlanET Joint Venture, which is based on the Dutch-German border in a city called Vreden, Germany. Martin Lensink has been involved in the cogeneration of electricity and useful heat since 1986 and has been in the energy industry since 1980. He has worked in the cogeneration field with a number of employers, such as Union Gas, SNC Lavalin, Rolls-Royce/U.S. Turbine, and Toromont Energy.


The Principles of PlanET Joint Venture also operate PlanET Biogastechnik GmbH in Vreden, Germany. The name PlanET stands for “Planning and Application of Energy Technology”. The English word which comes closest to the German word “planung” is design. PlanET specializes in the design, construction, and service of advanced biogas plants. PlanET started 10 years ago, and now has about 140 employees, and 120 operating biogas plants.

 

Our Technology

Features of the PlanET technology including the following:
  1. A continuously mixed reactor. The bacterial action is constant with organic input being fed every two hours and mixing is continuously to release biogas from the liquid slurry.
  2. A dry feeder. PlanET started designing dry feeders 10 years ago, and have been at the forefront of dry feeder design in Germany. They design and build a wide variety of dry feeders, not only for PlanET systems, but also for other biogas suppliers in the European market.
  3. State-Of-The-Art control systems, allowing us at PBS and PlanET in Germany to provide outstanding on-line support via remote, internet based monitoring.
  4. Mesophylic operation. Our heating systems ensure that the process occurs at 38°C +/- 5°C. Although PlanET has some experience with thermophylic operation (56°C), mesophylic operation provides more flexibility on operating temperature and a variety of input menus.

Who We Serve

We serve biogas customers throughout Canada and selected projects in the USA. Because Ontario has a “Standard Offer Contract” which pays a known amount for the electricity produced from biogas plants for 20 years, our focus is the Ontario market. However, we are working on projects in Western Canada, Quebec, and the Maritimes, as well as a few selected projects in the USA.
We are especially interested in serving customers in Ontario who meet most of the following criteria:
  1. High heat load on-site, such as greenhouses or poultry barns or factories that produce organic by-products.
  2. High power load on site so that all or most of the power generated by the biogas stays on the property.
  3. Access to “high octane” biomass at or near the site. in Ontario at this time, projects based on say, poultry manure or swine manure only are economically marginal, since dairy/swine manure produce only about 20m3 – 25m3 of biogas per tonne of manure. The greater the biogas yield or your organic matter, the better the project economics.
  4. A connection with the local distribution company (which could be an electrical distribution company or a natural gas distribution company), that is straight-forward cost effective and quick to implement/facilitate.

Our PBS Team

Management

 

Ken Campbell

President
Clare Riepma

Clare Riepma

Manager, Business Development

 

Martin Lensink, P. Eng.

Joint Venture Partner

 

Support Services


Jan-Hendrik Thesing  

Project & Services Manager

Craig Baker

Project Manager

Matt Lensink

Application Manager

Leslie Hildebrand 

Business Accountant

RenĂ©e Rochefort-Smith 

External Communications &

Administrative Assistant

  

Construction

John Papetti

Construction Foreman

 

John Jackson

PBS Installer

 

Jim Jackson 

PBS Installer

 

Installation List

If you would like a copy of PlanET's installation list, please email us.

 

Benefits of PBS

  1. You benefit from our experience gained from over 120 renewable biogas projects ranging in size from 37 kW to 6 MW. In calendar year 2005, PlanET Biogas installations produced a total of 3.2 million kW.h.

  2. Our in-house microbiology team is lead by Dr. Annette Sander. The most critical success factor for a biogas plant is on-going (weekly) microbiology process support.

  3. We service biogas-fuelled cogen systems.

  4. We develop, design, and retrofit dry feeders, giving you maximum flexibility on input menus and allowing you to operate at the highest % TS possible in the anaerobic digester.

  5. Since we are a global company, you benefit from our experience in other countries, such as Germany, the Netherlands, France, and other Western European countries (including upgrading biogas-to-pipeline methane and distribution of biogas-to-thermal/electrical users).

  6. All of the essential biogas project services we provide in-house, including digester design, construction management, project management commissioning, and after-market services.

  7. The dry feeders operate automatically every two hours. You minimize how much time you spend operating the biogas system.

  8. We are very good at electrical interconnetion and instrumentation/control. One of our core competencies is process design, process installation, and realtime biogas process monitoring/control via the internet.

  9. We are an exclusive service partner for the most efficient engine genset in the sub 300 kW range.

  10. We have excellent after-market capability.

Downloads

Pictures of PlanET anaerobic digesters (PDF - 5.7mb)
NRCAN Discover Biogas brochure (PDF - 4.2mb)

Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs - Infosheets:
  Anaerobic Digestion Basics (Doc - 3.8mb)
  Considerations and Opportunities (Doc - 165kb)
  Energy Yields (Doc - 1.1mb)
  Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (Doc - 1.1mb)