CBG Plant Breakeven & ROI Calculator

It is a free financial model for a compressed biogas (CBG) plant that works out monthly revenue, operating cost, cash surplus and the breakeven utilisation — the share of nameplate capacity at which revenue covers every cost including the loan EMI. You set the plant capacity and edit any feedstock, cost or revenue assumption; the breakeven and the five-year projection recompute instantly.

Any capacity from 0.5 TPD (500 kg of CBG per day) up to 20 TPD. The default view opens at 5 TPD. When you change the capacity, every quantity — press mud, cow dung, power, trucks, FOM, EMI and so on — rescales: throughput items scale linearly with output, capital-linked items such as EMI and maintenance scale by the six-tenths rule, and crew-linked items scale sub-linearly, so a small plant is not just a large plant divided down.

Breakeven utilisation equals fixed cost divided by the contribution margin at full capacity (revenue minus variable cost). Below that utilisation the plant runs at a cash loss; above it, every extra kilogram of CBG adds the contribution margin to cash surplus. The tool also shows the breakeven CBG price and the breakeven CBG volume in kilograms and TPD.

You pick the feedstock in the tool — press mud, cattle dung, food/kitchen waste, napier grass, agri-residue (paddy straw), or a custom mix — and it derives the tonnage from that feedstock's biomethane yield. For example press mud yields about 40 kg of CBG per tonne, so a 5 TPD plant needs roughly 125 tonnes of press mud a day; cattle dung yields far less per tonne and so needs much higher volumes.

Yes. Choose 'Mixed (custom blend)' and set the percentage of each feedstock. The tool computes a mass-weighted yield, price and digestate factor for the blend and sizes the feedstock requirement accordingly — useful when a plant runs on, say, 60% press mud and 40% food waste.

The calculator builds capex from a cost per TPD, nets the MNRE central financial assistance (₹4 crore per 4,800 kg/day, capped at ₹10 crore), splits the balance into debt and equity, derives the loan EMI, and reports simple equity payback and a 15-year equity IRR. Typical subsidised press-mud plants at a realistic CBG price land in the region of a 5–7 year equity payback and a mid-teens IRR, but this is highly sensitive to the CBG offtake price, feedstock cost and utilisation — model your own numbers.

You set the CBG sale price between ₹54 per kg (the SATAT/OMC floor) and ₹105 per kg (a premium industrial sale), with ₹72 — roughly CGD synchronisation at 85% of CNG retail — as a realistic mid-point. A fertiliser organic manure (FOM) credit of ₹2,500 per tonne sits alongside it, and every figure is editable. The calculator reports the cost per kg of CBG net of the FOM credit, which is the number to compare against your off-take price.

Without subsidy. The EMI is a single cash line covering debt service, so the tool reports cash surplus rather than EBITDA or PAT. Depreciation, income tax and GST sit outside the model. If you want the subsidy-adjusted instalment, edit the EMI line directly.

FOM — fermented or fertiliser organic manure — is the digestate by-product of the anaerobic digestion that produces CBG. Selling it as organic manure is a second revenue stream that lowers the effective cost per kg of CBG. In this model FOM is valued ex-plant with no bagging or FOM transport cost included.

Yes. The calculator generates a one-page report with your capacity, the breakeven figures, unit economics and the five-year cash-flow projection that you can save as a PDF. Share your contact details and the PelletRates team can follow up with a detailed, location-specific feasibility study.

The defaults model a standard press-mud CBG plant and are a planning starting point, not a quotation. Feedstock prices, power tariffs, transport and the EMI vary by state and by project. Edit every line to your own quotes before relying on the result, or request a consultation for a verified feasibility study.