Yeah, I donr know what is up with NE Elect Coop going up while the others are going down................. Edit-seems this is a winter increase that is actually lower than last winter's rate and claim that the increase is due to lack of adequate natural gas pipeline in New England. From the official release "The same conditions that have caused New England electric rates to spike for the past three winters are still to blame for this latest seasonal increase. Though natural gas prices remain low at the wellhead, a lack of adequate pipeline capacity into New England means that power producers will be competing again this winter with home heating for limited natural gas supplies. This causes a significant delivery premium to be added to the wellhead price for natural gas, which is used to generate more than half of the electricity produced in New England."
We were looking at something like an 18% increase last year then oil tanked and our electric rates actually went down. They still aren't cheap but 18% would have put them up to or close to .20/kwh.
Two winters ago, because of dependence on natural gas (which used to be backup, not main supply), the day-ahead price of electricity was averaging $0.24/kwh from ISO-New England. It is normally $0.03 to $0.06. At one point during the winter I saw it hit $0.80. It takes some time for the wholesale prices to affect fixed rate suppliers because of regulations. This is for electricity only and doesn't include the large fees the transmission monopolies add on. I don't expect the price of power to be dropping any time soon.
Where is that in relation to the pellet mill? I've been through Athens several times this summer and didn't see anything like that.
It's on the same site. The construction is now blocking the view of the pellet plant from the road. On the opposite side of the driveway is the new 1 acre wood storage building, right next to the original 1 acre wood building. The larger structure in the picture is just the dry ESP. Behind that is a wood dryer that will partially pre-dry our pellet material. In front of the ESP is the foundation for the combustor which will be about 125 feet tall. To the left, off the side of the picture is where the cooling tower goes. Next to the combustor there will be a fairly large ORC building, which isn't started yet. Edit: I went out near the gate and took a picture for you from the driveway. You can barely see the pellet plant in the back.
Scott, will the Biomass plant be generating heat/steam for plant operations, or co-gen'ing electricity as well?
It doesn't use steam. The combustor heats a thermal oil which transfers heat to a working fluid that turns the turbine. It the largest single TOH (Thermal Oil Heater) and ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) turbine ever built - so far. Canada has 2 locations with dual combustor-turbines that combined have a higher net output. (http://www.turboden.eu/en/public/press/20151006_Turboden_Biomass_West Fraser_ENG.pdf) It's the 2nd ORC plant in the USA but there are over 300 world-wide. The other USA ORC plant is a tiny one in Albany New York's sewer treatment plant. You can read more about the ORC process at Turboden: Organic Rankine Cycle - Description or see their installations at Turboden: References. If you look on their About page, there's a video describing the ORC process. The working fluid is cooled with water. We are transferring that heat to a glycol loop and pumping it back across the road in 10" diameter pipes to heat the floor of the wood storage building which will provide some pre-drying of the wood in the building. The stack gas from the combustor is passing through a rotary dryer where we will pre-dry our longer fiber wood (chips). That will remove some of the load from our existing dryer and make it more efficient. The short answer to your question: yes, we will be using the excess heat from the power plant for the pellet plant. Since we're not wasting as much heat, the efficiency will be higher than any other biomass power plant - probably better than any fuel fired power plant. Edit: I feel like I'm hijacking the OP's thread now.
Yes, apologies to daffonce - hopefully he is interested in your project also. That makes perfect sense - I can see why MWP chose that configuration, lower maintenance. It sounds like this configuration will extract maximum waste-heat value, that's impressive. In these days of large corporations trying to promote fossil-fuel use (and transport) through areas where potential, significant, environmental and health quality impact are of real concern, it is most refreshing to read about a company that is willing to invest in capital infrastructure for plant security and growth, local job creation, and complete organic life-cycle utilization of resources on-hand. Best wishes to you and MWP for a timely and successful implementation of your project, Best Regards, Robert
All good i am interested in power generation. Sounds like you are getting maximum effiency out of your energy input.
Good luck Scot, Keep us posted! When ya fire it for the first time it will fit right in this thread! Here's how ya hijack one! BEER!!
