Activity supported with Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation funding
BOONE—The
Appalachian Energy Center at Appalachian State University recently
completed a project that began in 2005 to help eight North Carolina
counties produce renewable energy while reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and improve their economy.
The project was funded by a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds
Foundation of Winston-Salem. The ZSR Foundation and the Appalachian
Energy Center share the goals of protecting the environment while
spurring community development throughout North Carolina.
Because of this recent grant, and previous funding from Z. Smith
Reynolds Foundation, Golden LEAF Foundation, the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and the work of the Appalachian Energy Center,
there are eight new landfill gas projects in North Carolina producing an
average of over 1,700 kilowatt watt hours of electricity per month. The first landfill gas to energy conversion project began in 2005
in Watauga County and was completed in 2012. The most recent projects
began in 2013 in Rockingham and Edgecombe counties and were completed in
2014.
According to Dr. Jeff Ramsdell, director of the Appalachian Energy
Center, “We are so pleased to have been able to contribute to the
development of a number of small to medium-sized landfill gas projects
in North Carolina. These projects eliminate massive amounts of
greenhouse gases while creating new income streams the counties who
operated these landfills. Since these projects began, over 90 million
kilowatt hours of renewable energy have been produced for the North
Carolina grid.”
With all of the concern about climate change, methane emissions
have often been a subject of conversation. Methane is a serious
greenhouse gas, 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide at storing heat
in the atmosphere. Landfills are a major source of methane emissions.
The methane gas is created as buried organic waste decomposes
underground. These landfill gas projects capture methane before it is
emitted into the atmosphere and pipe it to engines which burn the
methane as fuel to gnerate electricity. To date over 600,000 tons of
carbon dioxide equivalent have been reduced.
The Appalachian Energy Center has worked primarily with limited
resource counties with smaller landfills to develop community-based
landfill gas projects through a program called Community TIES. According
to Jason Hoyle, business analyst at the Energy Center, “Commercial
landfill gas developers have made money at larger landfills for decades,
but smaller landfills were ignored. We feel we have proven that
landfill gas projects, even at smaller landfills, can make sense to the
counties that own them as self-developed community-based projects.”
This work has directly resulted in landfill gas utilization
projects in Columbus, Watauga, Wilkes, Haywood, Rockingham, and
Edgecombe counties. The Energy Center has also provided assistance to
projects in Gaston, Robeson and several other North Carolina counties.
These eight projects have an estimated production capacity of over seven
megawatts of electricity or enough to power about 5,000 average North
Carolina homes.
According to Stan Steury, research scientist at the Energy Center,
the path to sustainability for these projects has not been easy, but
there are now sustainable landfill gas to energy projects in several
North Carolina counties thanks to the Z Smith Reynolds Foundation, the
Energy Center and other partners.
“There have been many bumps in the road,” Steury said, “but our
staff has worked with county employees, equipment and service companies,
utility companies, regulatory agencies and others to solve these
problems. Most of these projects would not have happened had it not been
for the federal stimulus funds, but the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation
has also been instrumental in providing the Energy Center with grant
funding to locate and plan potential projects, and with the recent
grant, to help make them sustainable.”
According to Steury, electricity generation is not the first choice
of the Energy Center in landfill gas development, because generators
are so inefficient at converting energy in landfill gas to electricity,
usually about 30 percent efficient, while boilers or furnaces burning
landfill gas may have energy conversion efficiency that is over 90
percent. Using gas directly in this way is not always possible, however.
But due to the tight timelines of ARRA, the projects had to be
developed quickly and in most cases electricity generation is just the
fastest way to develop.
The Energy Center has used an old technology in a new way on
several of these projects – automotive (V-8) engines fueled by landfill
gas running generators rated at about 70 kilowatts each. This is one of
the first successful uses of this type of generator in the nation. It
offers easy maintenance, since the engines are the same as those worked
on by nearly any auto mechanic, and parts are available at the local
auto part store.
For more information, contact Steury at steurysw@appstate.edu, 828-262-7515 or 828-773-9752, or Ramsdell at 828-262-7514 or ramsdellje@appstate.edu.
About Appalachian Energy Center
The Appalachian Energy Center at Appalachian State University
conducts energy research and applied program activities in the areas of
energy efficiency, renewable energy technologies, forecasting and
modeling, economic development and policy analysis in a
multi-disciplinary environment.
http://blog.renewableenergyworld.com/ugc/blogs/2015/08/appalachian_s_energy.html
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