Thoughts on mega wind and solar projects

[JasperFrank]

Your comments are all right on point. And that’s why I said in terms of of strict power generation, forest biomass isn’t cost competitive with natural gas. But when you look at the larger benefits to society and the tremendous cost of high severity forest fires, subsidizing wood biomass may in fact make economic and environmental sense. That is why one is seriously being planned in northern Arizona at this time.

Its always revealed in the weeds. A system annalist has to look at the total system. Not just the ones that makes candy coated press releases.

 

[jyoutz]

Just rake the forest.

About 20 million acres needs raked on federal lands alone in the western U.S. according to reports done by USFS inventory analysis. That doesn’t include, state, municipal, and private lands. Probably not enough rakes or rake operators in this country.

 

[jyoutz]

Biomass, wood fired plants... maybe im jaded, but there is like a $2.1b plant north of Gainesville FLa, that the operator is being paid to not run, as thats cheaper than actually running it.

Given the choice of being next to a biomass plant vs solar, id take solar all day. Biomass has a lot of traffic, chipper (or chipped off site), and massive piles of either wood or chips.

Basically city agrees to buy out a contract, to idle the plant vs pay operating costs. To the tune of $1.2b to have a non operating plant. I had to reread the details but I guess it was either $70m/year for 30 years; or buy it for $1.2b and shut it down?


What i never saw asked, was, how much to retro fit to gas? I would think it would cost a fair bit, but in the end, its heat source make water hot, hot water make wheel turn, wheel make magic go down wires...

Well what you say is true about the operations. But 500K acre wildfires that destroy forests, communities and human lives in the western U.S. are far more costly and disruptive than a biomass generating plant. Those types of fires simply don’t occur in Florida.

 

[paulsharvey]

Well what you say is true about the operations. But 500K acre wildfires that destroy forests, communities and human lives in the western U.S. are far more costly and disruptive than a biomass generating plant. Those types of fires simply don’t occur in Florida.

Wouldn't controlled burns be much more affordable and effective? I know the would need to time them to avoid making things worse.

We get fires around here pretty often, but they are different. I can only think of one case that evacuated more than a few thousand people. Ours are generally not fire storms, they are just fires.

 

[jyoutz]

Wouldn't controlled burns be much more affordable and effective? I know the would need to time them to avoid making things worse.

We get fires around here pretty often, but they are different. I can only think of one case that evacuated more than a few thousand people. Ours are generally not fire storms, they are just fires.

Prescribed burns are a great tool that are used annually. But when you have mature stands of timber it’s very difficult to thin 90’ trees with fire; cutting is more effective. Most stands of various ages need removal of sawtimber, smaller trees (biomass), and then prescribed burning to restore a healthy and resilient stand that won’t support high severity fires. Attempts to reduce hazardous fuels by fire alone usually either result in just burning litter on the ground without thinning trees, or out of control crown fires. The southern pines in your area have been managed regularly with fire and cutting; most western forests haven’t seen fire in about 100 years. It’s not a good situation that’s easy to fix due to the scale of the issue.

 

[MossRoad]

There used to be old growth forest just north of us. Lots of fallen timber, stuff on the ground. Rotting logs, etc... every log you'd turn over had newts or salamanders, snakes, frogs in the puddles left by the stumps of blowdowns, etc... someone bought it, cleaned the forest floor, removed all dead wood. No more critters. Just a stand of big trees.

 

[Mtsoxfan]

Maybe I don't understand the numbers completely, and those in the know can straighten them out for me and others.

There is a biomass plant in Plainfield CT Plainfield – Greenleaf Power that I just read up on, as I remember when I lived in CT, there was a hurricane that tore up so many trees. There was a staging area close to me, with (guessing) about 3 acres of whole tree debris maybe 40+ feet high that was going there. Anyway, after reading what the plant produces, 37.5 Megawatts annually, and seeing the footprint, it got me wondering. We had 52 solar panels that produced 15+/- Megawatts annually. on about a 25 x 75 roof. It seems like either they weren't "fed" enough material to reach potential, or they don't produce much. Could they have produced much more energy in the same footprint using solar?
I really like solar, but as posted earlier, like other sources, it's not the silver bullet. We need diversity to overcome each sources downfall. And I do think burning biomass, and garbage as CT does, is part of that.
My question is, am I reading the numbers wrong? I know my 15MW production was fact. Our home, converted to all electric (oil fired boiler as backup) used close to all of that 15MW. Seems like 37.5MW is hardly worth the expense.

 

[ponytug]

Maybe I don't understand the numbers completely, and those in the know can straighten them out for me and others.

There is a biomass plant in Plainfield CT Plainfield – Greenleaf Power that I just read up on, as I remember when I lived in CT, there was a hurricane that tore up so many trees. There was a staging area close to me, with (guessing) about 3 acres of whole tree debris maybe 40+ feet high that was going there. Anyway, after reading what the plant produces, 37.5 Megawatts annually, and seeing the footprint, it got me wondering. We had 52 solar panels that produced 15+/- Megawatts annually. on about a 25 x 75 roof. It seems like either they weren't "fed" enough material to reach potential, or they don't produce much. Could they have produced much more energy in the same footprint using solar?
I really like solar, but as posted earlier, like other sources, it's not the silver bullet. We need diversity to overcome each sources downfall. And I do think burning biomass, and garbage as CT does, is part of that.
My question is, am I reading the numbers wrong? I know my 15MW production was fact. Our home, converted to all electric (oil fired boiler as backup) used close to all of that 15MW. Seems like 37.5MW is hardly worth the expense.

I believe that you are confusing units. The Plainfield plant produces something like 37.5MWx24hrsx350days to get 315GigaWatt hours of power per year (GWh/yr). Your solar panels are likely producing closer to 15MWh/yr (though that seems unusually sunny for New England, but I believe you. You could double check what PVWatts.org thinks for your site, if you are curious.) So, in round numbers, the Plainfield plant cranks out about 215,000 times as much power.

The 350 operational days per year is a WAG, but that's not a typical; I couldn't find a specific uptime declaration for the plant.

Does that help?

All the best,

Peter

 

[MossRoad]

I believe that you are confusing units. The Plainfield plant produces something like 37.5MWx24hrsx350days to get 315GigaWatt hours of power per year (GWh/yr). Your solar panels are likely producing closer to 15MWh/yr (though that seems unusually sunny for New England, but I believe you. You could double check what PVWatts.org thinks for your site, if you are curious.) So, in round numbers, the Plainfield plant cranks out about 215,000 times as much power.

The 350 operational days per year is a WAG, but that's not a typical; I couldn't find a specific uptime declaration for the plant.

Does that help?

All the best,

Peter

Their website doesn't do a good job of explaining that part to the average person.

"To do this, PRE utilizes a unique state-of-the-art staged gasification system, steam turbine and WEG generator to generate approximately 37.5 megawatts of power annually. "

It should say they can produce an average of 37.5 megawatts continuously which is enough to power 25-30,000 homes, or something similar.

 

[MossRoad]

Well here we go. Enough power for 37,000 houses.

 

[jyoutz]

There used to be old growth forest just north of us. Lots of fallen timber, stuff on the ground. Rotting logs, etc... every log you'd turn over had newts or salamanders, snakes, frogs in the puddles left by the stumps of blowdowns, etc... someone bought it, cleaned the forest floor, removed all dead wood. No more critters. Just a stand of big trees.

A totally different forest ecology. Northern hardwood and mixed forests are mesic and don’t have fire in their natural ecology. Southern pines and western conifer forests are characterized as fire facilitated forests that require recycling of nutrients and thinning of forests by fire to maintain more open and healthy conditions. The northern and coastal forests are so mesic that recycling of nutrients occurs by decay, not fire.

 

[MossRoad]

A totally different forest ecology. Northern hardwood and mixed forests are mesic and don’t have fire in their natural ecology. Southern pines and western conifer forests are characterized as fire facilitated forests that require recycling of nutrients and thinning of forests by fire to maintain more open and healthy conditions. The northern and coastal forests are so mesic that recycling of nutrients occurs by decay, not fire.

There's no critters living in the stuff on the forest floor?

 

[jyoutz]

There's no critters living in the stuff on the forest floor?

Those that are there are adapted to frequent low severity fires.And no doubt that some don’t survive or go underground.

 

[Mtsoxfan]

Thanks.

I believe that you are confusing units. The Plainfield plant produces something like 37.5MWx24hrsx350days to get 315GigaWatt hours of power per year (GWh/yr). Your solar panels are likely producing closer to 15MWh/yr (though that seems unusually sunny for New England, but I believe you. You could double check what PVWatts.org thinks for your site, if you are curious.) So, in round numbers, the Plainfield plant cranks out about 215,000 times as much power.

The 350 operational days per year is a WAG, but that's not a typical; I couldn't find a specific uptime declaration for the plant.

Does that help?

All the best,

Peter

Thanks. That is the amount of energy I produced, although, since I owned the system, not rented, I cleared snow off as soon as it fell. I wanted to squeeze every dime out of that sunshine. It was a 10.75K system. By October, I net metered over 6K which I would draw off of in winter. I never saw anyone else put that effort into it. LOL, it was a raised ranch, and I could snow rake it off the main house easily. The addition was a two stories, house over garage, and I was on an 8' step ladder to clear snow. Few pucker moments there.