Natural Gas Power Plant Converts to Renewable Energy

A natural gas fired cogeneration power plant in New York state is being converted to run exclusively on a renewable source.  Work has started to convert the 7 MW Laidlaw Energy Group plant so that it can run on wood chips to supply of electricity to the national grid as well as supplying heat and power to operate an on-site hardwood lumber dry kiln.

Aided by a $1m grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Laidlaw has completed the design and engineering for the project, procured the requisite equipment and entered into an agreement that provides for the fixed price construction of the project. The facility is expected to resume commercial operations midway through next year.

Is this a great sign of the times!  Natural gas is just too expensive and too scarce to be used for power generation.

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Comments

[Engineer-Poet]

Power of this conversion: 7 MW.

Average renewable electric production in the USA (per the EIA): 40,857 MW.
Amount which is non-hydro: 10,155 MW.

Average electric consumption of the USA in 2004: 450,068 MW.

Seven lousy megawatts is pathetic.

(And since you're censoring all my nice HTML formatting and links, the above data is all from http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/ptb0802a.html)

[John T]

7 mw is probably the size of their turbine. I assume their turbine is steam driven. They probably don't need any more. Yes, 7 mw is very small, but at this site that is 100% of their output.

Wood chip burning is in fact becoming more important. I worked for a Company who had a wood fired boiler, but stopped burning wood a long time ago. However they are back to burning wood. They use only standing dead wood for their harvest (fallen wood is generally rotted, and do not take green trees). I think they also have a limit on what percentage of the wood they can take so as to not effect the forest ecosystem.

[husky air compressor]

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