LE SUEUR, Minn. - One of Minnesota’s most ambitious green energy projects is flipping the “on” switch.
The power plant, completed in November, is a collection of tanks and fabric bubbles.
Inside, bacteria in giant, heated tanks digest corn silage and manure to produce methane, a flammable gas that’s fed into the engines used to generate electricity. Le Sueur, famous for the Green Giant brand, is now home to one of the largest biogas power stations in the world.
“This is the newest and best technology available,” said LeRoy Koppendrayer, board chairman of the plant’s operating company, which is a unit of the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency, a power producer for 12 cities including Le Sueur.
Yet not everyone is jolly about the plant. Critics have questioned whether the benefits have been oversold and the risks understated.
The plant’s output isn’t huge, equivalent to about four wind turbines. Yet the facility, called the Hometown BioEnergy Project, promises to deliver cheap, renewable power when customers need it - not just at the whim of nature like wind power.
Three fabric domes store methane from the constantly running anaerobic digesters. They’re designed to feed the biogas to generators that run 12 to 16 hours a day when electrical demand peaks, typically during daytime and evening.
“We see ourselves being more financially effective by storing the gas and making electricity when it has greater value,” said Derick Dahlen, chief executive officer of Avant Energy, a Minneapolis-based company that developed the biogas project and has long managed the municipal power agency.
During the start-up, he said, the plant is increasing its methane output and generates power for several hours each day.
The project, which will help the 12 municipal utilities meet state renewable-energy requirements, is a big commitment to a still-developing technology.
About 2,000 U.S. sites produce biogas - mostly farms, wastewater treatment plants and landfills - though not all generate power. The nation’s total biogas electrical output is 158 megawatts, about the output of a single 1950s-era coal power plant, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News.
Minnesota’s other biogas digesters are mostly smaller units at dairy farms that use the technology for manure management, odor reduction and small-scale power generation. A large biogas unit went online last year at the Blue Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant in Shakopee.
In Europe, biogas technology is more common, thanks to generous price supports. Germany has the most, about 7,000 biogas plants, said Mackinnon Lawrence, a Navigant Research analyst who has studied the biogas industry. He said biogas has benefits and challenges.
“It is a fickle process,” Lawrence said, especially with manure, a common feedstock. “It has to be the right temperature,the right mix of organisms. You are constantly brewing this thing.”
One U.S. biogas company, New York-based Microgy Inc., built digesters using technology similar to the Le Sueur plant’s, only to file for bankruptcy in 2010. An uncompleted biogas plant in Hull, Iowa, went bankrupt in 2011 after developer Bison Renewable Energy, a company with Minnesota roots, ran out of money.
Three biogas-powered generators in Wisconsin were shut down in 2012 by Dairyland Power Cooperative because they couldn’t compete in the power market. The La Crosse, Wis.-based co-op now pays three dairy farms to flare the gas. Dairyland hopes to restart the generators in 2015 after making repairs and improvements, co-op spokesman Deb Mirasola said in an email.
Business, Pages 19 on 01/06/2014