Associate Editor
MONTFORT
About 100 people interested in renewable energy gathered Friday (Nov. 13) for a Homegrown Renewable Energy tour designed to showcase some alternative energy systems that can help promote homegrown energy production that may end up helping farmers as well as the environment and the economy.
Margaret Krome, with Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, one of the sponsors of the tour, said several policies are being considered by state lawmakers for introduction in the Clean Energy Jobs Act, a bill that will create incentives that promote homegrown energy production in the state. The tour was designed to highlight those that the sponsors believe will be best for agriculture along with the environment.
Randy Romanski, the deputy state agriculture secretary, told the crowd that he was standing in for state Ag Secretary Rod Nilsestuen who was in Israel for a mission on energy – talking about waste-to-energy systems, including those harnessing energy from cow manure.
The partners that sponsored the tour, Michael Fields; Wisconsin Farmers Union; Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection; Office of Energy Independence; and others is a fortunate one, Romanski said, because it focuses attention on things that can be done here to harness untapped energy in the Midwest.
Wisconsin is a leading state in manure digester implementation, and manure is an opportunity here, he said, with our large livestock industry. Many food processors and dairy manufacturers can take advantage of the same waste-to-energy technology. Some of them already are, he added.
Doug Caruso, new president of Wisconsin Farmers Union, said he was happy to see the turnout for the energy tour. They had needed to hire a second bus to take the many interested participants on the southwest tour of various energy installations.
“A clean environment, jobs and prosperous farms are not mutually exclusive. It can be win-win for everyone,” Caruso added.
With the Montfort wind farm as a backdrop, the tour began with a look at cars that are modified to run on compressed natural gas and the equipment needed to turn natural gas, or biogas, into the form needed to operate the cars.
Mark Torresani, with Cornerstone Environmental Group in Madison, explained how technology from the 1970s has been dusted off and improved. He brought a trailer equipped with the machinery needed to process gas that might come off a landfill or manure digester, and compress it for use in motor vehicles.
Pete Taglia, from Clean Wisconsin, one of the other sponsors of the tour, explained that they highlighted this type of energy because 98 percent of the natural gas comes from North America. If energy is produced at a manure digester it is even closer to home.
The biogas compression system is made in southern Wisconsin, making that an attractive prospect from the jobs and economic perspective. Torresani said they are hoping a compressed natural gas unit, like the one he showcased on the tour, will be installed as a community manure digester that three farmers are planning to build with Dane County, near Waunakee.
He said it’s intriguing to contemplate the idea that with a manure digester and the right modifications to their equipment, farmers could produce energy from manure to run their tractors. The units, he said, are already used to compress landfill gas and the gas from wastewater plants.
Mike DiMaggio, with Dane County Public Works, said the county has a 6.4 megawatt generating station at a landfill that generates $3.2 million in income per year.
The experts at the tour noted that compressed natural gas is available as a vehicle fuel for about 35 cents to 40 cents a gallon. Taglia said Wisconsin can make low-carbon transportation fuels and a low-carbon fuel standard should be part of the plan the state puts in place to clean up our environment.
The second stop on the tour was Meister Cheese in Muscoda, where the cheese plant and its adjacent whey processing plant installed a biomass boiler in 2006. The energy source is waste wood chips from nearby sawmills.
Larry Harris, director of operations at Meister, said the wood-fired boiler has saved the company $1 million to $1.2 million gross over natural gas, but the most valuable thing they have gained comes from knowing what their energy costs will be.
They have eliminated the volatility of the energy market, Harris said, because now their energy comes mostly from sawmills within 500 feet of them. The facility burns from 27 to 35 tons of wood a day for the energy-intensive cheese and whey processing plants. The arrangement has been a win-win for the sawmills, too, he said, as they eliminated their cost of shipping the wood chips to Wisconsin Rapids.
Another core value of the Meister Cheese Co., Harris said, is trying to reduce the “food miles” and using a local energy source fits in with that philosophy.
Al Anderson, of AFS Energy Systems, the company that helped Harris design and build the system, said that in the long term these systems allow businesses to cut costs and stay afloat.
“It’s not like natural gas where you turn on the valve and forget about it. This may interrupt your sleep or the football game. But I’ve been doing this for 35 years and I haven’t seen anybody yet who’s sorry they converted to wood,” he said.
Harris said a benefit of the system is that they know exactly what they are going to be paying for their energy – they negotiate prices with the sawmills and pay slightly above the normal wood chip market rate. “But we don’t have to worry about volatility,” Harris said.
“We’re not in business to worry about energy. We’re here to make cheese and protein products,” Harris added.
The system involves a large concrete bunker where the chips are stored and a conveyor system for sorting out any foreign objects and pieces that are too large. From there they go to the boiler. The waste from the system is about one 55-gallon drum of fly ash per day and there is very little smoke or smell from the wood-fired system.
Scott Meister said that in addition to the economies they have gotten from the system, it helps the cheese company in its marketing. They began looking at the system in the post-911 era when gas prices skyrocketed affecting their bottom line.
For such a system to be workable, there needs to be a continuous 24/7 demand for the energy it produces and a matching supply. Meister added that for it to be economical gas needs to be expensive.
His company got some help from various government programs. Focus on Energy helped with a small planning grant, he said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Products Laboratory in Madison was very helpful.
“We couldn’t be more happy with the operation,” Meister said.
Harris said the system burns wood at 1,800 degrees and the exhaust is run through two cyclones to take out the ash. The system will burn green or dry wood. “It’s the simplest system I could come up with and it works flawlessly,” he said.
Though the company does have a natural gas backup system, they haven’t had to use it.
The stop was scheduled to highlight the coalition’s support of a Fuels for Schools and a Biomass Crop Reserve Program. The first would provide financial incentives for schools and communities to use homegrown fuels like wood. The second would award contracts to farmers to plant native perennial plants that would then be available for bioenergy systems.
The tour also visited a Cardinal glass facility that produces energy-efficient glass for windows to showcase job creation and a home near Ridgeway that produces so much solar-powered electricity that it goes back onto the grid.
Organizers said the last stop was scheduled to highlight the fact that energy buyback rates vary from one utility to another, and certain utilities don’t offer buyback rates at all. Legislation to establish consistent renewable energy buyback rates will make it more likely that homeowners, farmers, schools and small businesses will install renewable energy systems, they said.
With such a plan in place, those who install the systems will know what kind of rate they will get and it will allow them to pay off their renewable energy investment.
