I think the "respawning" of the items around "pod drops" (3:38 ;D ) is actually when the developers change or move them. So if an item hasn't been touched by the devs, it won't respawn.
The game is designed so that biomass burners aren't used except when your other sources of power are insufficient, example if you have 300MW capacity with Biomass and 700MW capacity with Coal and you consume 600MW, your Biomass burners will idle and not consume any fuel but if your consumption jumps to 800MW then your Biomass burners will start burning fuel to provide the needed 100MW of power that your Coal reactors aren't able to supply. Batteries basically fill the same role though.
