Three biomass facilities coming online

Bobby L. Hickman

October 6, 2008

Oglethorpe Power Corporation (OPC), the largest US power supply cooperative, is planning to build as many as three biomass electric generating facilities to help meet Georgia's growing power needs.

The projects are a "win-win-win", said Mike Price, chief operating officer of OPC. He said the biomass plants will help meet the energy needs of Georgia's growing population, "increase our fuel supply from renewable sources and keeping the dollars we spend on fuel right here in our Georgia economy."

The company will build at least two 100-megawatt biomass facilities at a cost of $400 million to $500 million per facility. Each plant will provide 40 jobs. Also, each facility will require an annual investment of more than $30 million for fuel stock and could create hundreds of new jobs in the forestry industry.

OPC has acquired options for five potential sites: two in Washington County, and one each in Appling, Echols and Warren counties. Price said the company will narrow its choices down to one site in Appling, one in Echols, and one of the three sites in Washington and Warren. Two of those three final sites would be built and become operational in 2014 and 2015. OPC's members - 38 cooperatives across the state - have approved building two plants, and will decide later whether to go forward with a third facility that would go online in 2015.

Price said the cooperatives that own OPC have "a great deal of interest in producing energy from renewable and 'green' resources." OPC members also own Green Power EMC, which is involved in such renewable energy projects as landfill gas, small river hydroelectric and small solar projects."

However, one driving force is finding cost-effective and feasible ways to meet a Georgia population that is projected to reach 12 million residents by 2030. OPC currently serves 4.1 million Georgians, about half the state's total residents. "As the state's population continues to grow, energy needs continue to grow," Price said.

"With 12 million people expected to call Georgia home by the year 2030, we will need more energy to meet the demand of our growing population," said Chris Clark, executive director of the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority (GEFA).  "The addition of Oglethorpe Power's biomass electricity plants will help supply Georgians with homegrown energy that is clean and renewable."

Price also said OPC is seeking ways to meet future energy needs "in a way that maintains diversity of fuel supply. We think diversity among different fuel types - nuclear, coal, natural gas and hydroelectric - is a good thing from a risk-management perspective."

The obvious answer is biomass. Price said, "We realized there's an abundant timber resource right here in our backyard. So we thought: what better way to meet some of those growth projections as part of a blended portfolio?"

However, OPC will only be able to meet a small percentage of its needs with renewable resources. OPC's members have a combined capacity of 4,700 megawatts, and peak loads are about 9,000 MW (including both locally generated and purchased power. "Georgia is not a great state for solar or wind generation," Price noted. "It is a good state for biomass, but even that has limited potential because there is a limited amount of biomass material you can use to generate energy." Coupled with the "tremendous" amount of capacity OPC members will need in coming years, "It would be impossible to meet all that growth through any renewable resource, including biomass," he added.

Nevertheless, Price said, OPC will work with the timber industry and manufacturers to "maximize our use of biomass waste residue products when we can." The power plants will use boilers and steam turbines to generate electricity. Fuels be a woody biomass mixture that would include chipped pulpwood; manufacturing residues such as wood waste from sawmills; and harvest residue, such as wood that remains after forest are cleared. Also, while the boilers will be designed mainly to burn woody biomass, they could also use such non-woody materials as pecan hulls and peanut shells that are also plentiful in Georgia.

The projects are also expected to be cost-effective while using proven technologies. Those technologies - boilers and steam turbines burning chipped wood - are not new approaches, Price noted, "although ours is on a little larger scale than other people are doing." He said OPC looked at several alternatives to produce energy around 2015, such as natural gas, coal-fired plants or nuclear facilities. "We found the cost of the energy coming out of the biomass plant is very competitive with the other technologies you can bring online in that timeframe," Price said.

While the OPC projects may only be producing a relatively small amount of electricity, the project could have a broad impact. Gov. Sonny Perdue said, "With our abundant biomass resources, Georgia has the unique opportunity to expand our use of alternative energy, grow our economy and transform the way we provide energy to our citizens. Oglethorpe Power's pioneering investment in alternative energy is consistent with our goal to grow, convert, and use biomass energy to power our homes and businesses."

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