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By BRETT WILKISON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors had their first reckoning Tuesday with the financial risks posed by their switch to green energy sources.
After a lengthy debate, the board ultimately approved power purchase and lease agreements for a proposed chicken manure-fueled electricity and gas plant near the county airport.
The project by the private partnership OHR BioStar on 5.4 acres of county land near a existing wastewater treatment plant was seen by a three-member board majority as a key way to move the county Water Agency closer to carbon-free power by 2015.
But two supervisors, David Rabbitt and Shirlee Zane, voiced strong concerns about the agency’s predictions that the new electricity — drawn from a 1.4 megawatt fuel cell powered by methane produced from chicken waste — would end up costing more than the power bought on the wholesale market.
That higher cost, pegged at $330,000 in the first year, could result in a $1.45 million increase in the agency’s energy bill over the 20-year agreement, according to the agency.
Only in the 16th year of the project would it equal the wholesale power rate and thereafter begin to be cheaper, the projections showed.
“It has to be a shorter period,” said Rabbitt. “I can’t agree to raise our power rates for 15 years until we start to see some savings.”
Water agency officials called that timeline part of the tradeoff for a greener source of power.
They also said that they expect other related factors to produce a net gain for the county of $2.55 million over the 20-year period. Those factors are annual labor and operational savings of $80,000 from the project, the plant operators’ yearly $120,000 lease payment and the benefit of a locked-in power rate.
If those projections don’t hold and the savings don’t materialize, the higher energy bill won’t be passed along to ratepayers, a Water Agency official insisted Monday.
On Tuesday, Grant Davis, the Water Agency general manager, acknowledged the project was a “calculated risk.”
“This is about leadership on renewable energy. I’m comfortable saying we’re making a good bet,” Davis said.
The project received unwavering support from supervisor Mike McGuire, who represents the airport area, and board Chairman Efren Carrillo, who called it the “epitome of what public-private partnerships ought to look like.”
Zane ultimately backed off her concern that locking the county into a 20-year agreement could result in the water agency missing out on rate declines. She joined McGuire and Carrillo in support of the project.
Rabbitt cast the lone ‘no’ vote. He added that the debate likely prefaced a larger discussion later this year about the risks underlying the county’s possible move into the power business.
Supervisor Valerie Brown was absent from the meeting.
The $48 million project is to be financed through bonds sold by the California Municipal Finance Authority. It will supply about a quarter of the Water Agency’s power needs and sell unused methane — about three-quarters of the total produced — to PG&E.
Construction is to begin in October.
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2007 San Francisco:
“The agreement authorizes Otto H. Rosentreter Company and Alliance Power to partner in designing, permitting and building a $2.2 million 600 kW molten carbonate fuel cell energy generation plant at the Southeast Wastewater Treatment Plant, with a five year operation and maintenance agreement.
Work on the fuel cell project will begin next month, with the project funded from the City’s renewable energy project special funds (MECA, or Mayor’s Energy Conservation Account) and the SFPUC’s Power Enterprise operating funds. An additional $2.7 million rebate from the California Public Utilities Commission-mandated (CPUC) Self-Generation Investment Fund will cover the costs of purchasing the fuel cell unit and hardware. “(from the Water and Wastewater Newsletter, January 15, 2007)
600 kw = .6 megawatts. The Sonoma County plant will produce 1.4 megawatts which equals 1400 kws. So the price in 2007 was approximately $3,667 per kw (possibly $8,167 depending on the breakout of costs), and in 2011 it is $34,286. The SF plant uses methane conversion from waste water on-site. The Sonoma plant uses chicken manure from offsite and costs 4-10 times as much.
Same company: Otto H. Rosentreter Company is OHR, based in Santa Fe Springs (LA).
RK
Just…wow!..
Nothing to discuss here.
Have a good evening anyhow.
@FC – it was politically unfeasable to discharge directly into the Laguna, so I don’t consider that a viable lower cost option. I understand that Calpine turns the water into steam/electricity, and that in turn is put into the grid. None goes directly to any City or other government agency, or to their citizens. It gets sold wholesale to PGE(?) and then they in turn sell it retail to consumers. No price breaks or guarantees. I thought most Fiscal Conservatives were against Cap and Trade…
Affordable energy, is also the antithesis of Agenda 21. If you want to de-industrialize a nation-you certainly don’t want cheap energy. But they pretend.
Resonable….
The treated water conveyance pipline to the geysers was not the cheapest approach.
Release by defusers into the Laguna was.
Your electricity comes from the Calpine geothermal power plant near Cloverdale. Treated effluent is sent down geothermal wells that creates steam and spins turbines thus creating electricity.
In Sonoma County, I would guess there are also two small hydo electric powerplants that put out minimal MW, as well as one cogeneration plant, again minimal.
In my opinion,the highest risk to an assinine increase to our power bills comes from the revised cap and trade bill.
Far more effecient than the chicken crap idea, may be to place cogeneration plants at the wastewater treatment plants. That is, the ones that are not allready using digested methane gas mixed with natural gas to fire generators.
This is what governments go. They experiment with you bucks.
@Fiscal – which solution was cheaper? When you say we get clean energy – who is the we? Not the City of Santa Rosa.
.
Yes, somethings have risks. I’m not sure that PG&E raising their ratesis one of them, however…
Humm Fred….
Let’s see who reads and understands.
Please correct me if I am mistaken here.
From the story above:
Paragraph 1- Financial risks.
Paragraph 4- (power) would end up costing more than the power bought on the wholesale market.
Paragraph 5- That higher cost could result in a $1.45 M increase.
Where’s the contoversey?
It began in concept in my opinion.
I really wonder if some people commenting here even read this article. The County/Water Agency is NOT paying to build this thing, they ARE however getting guaranteed power at about 4 cents less a KWh than what you and I pay AND $120,000/annum in rent from the firm that is building the generator. Where’s the controversy? This actually seems like a good thing. Critics of government who don’t give credit where credit is due lose all credibility in my book.
@ Mockingbird…Oh, no doubt science works, but the argument can easily be made that science got us into this mess in the first place…
Fake Green Alert…The business of raising chickens for eggs and meat is not a green industry. Tons of pollutants are released in the atmosphere every year in the production and shipping of the products. And how is the burning of methane, a dangerous green house gas any more enviromentally friendlier than the electricity we receive from the geysers and hydroelectric power plants run by PG&E… This is a complete farce. I don’t care that they burn chicken poop, but don’t tell me it’s “green” whatever that means anymore…
1) the price was not the lowest solution.
2) Yes we get electricity for the geysers. That’s the whole point!
We spent alot of taxpayer money to build the pipeline becouse it was our source of long term, non carbon, sustainible electricity.
How is burning bird turds, or the digested gas- methane from the turds more economical or environmentally sound than spinning turbines with geyser steam?
Why did the SCWA not hire a design engineeering firm that specializes in power plants or cogeneration plants? Why did the not take that set of design documents to public bid with surety insurance of cost, a working plant and power production?
I have no doubts this will be another snafu boondogle that looses taxpayer money.
I will post this message again. Discover Magazine had a article a number of years ago called Anything into Oil. I wonder how many of you out there will actually go and research the article or any other research on the subject BEFORE you hit the thumbs down on this post. Afterall, Discover is a SCIENCE MAGAZINE. I imagine many of you teapartiers know everything you need to know about everything so you don’t have to do any research before voicing your opinions.
Science actually works. And it may this planet’s salvation (and the human races’ salvation). But not if the ignoramuses get their way in continuing the destruction of our environment out of greed.
Well… If i went to my company and said “GEE… BOSS How about we spend some money and We wont get anything back for 15 yrs” and I can tell you what things will cost then!1 So How about it are you in or OUT!! BOSS says” WOW I NEVER HAD SUCH A FINE DEAL EVER” sent to me like that…. Ide be a fool not to take you up on that ….. Guess some one is planning on keeping the Chicken POOP around also !!!!!
Good old Supervisor Shirlee Zane never fails to amuse in her thought processes. First she was again the chicken waste plant before she was for the chicken sh…. plant.
Didn’t the haughty John Kerry of the 2004 democrat campaign for president use this same strategery?
Which hand is the penny in?
Spending $48 million to build the thing will produce an income of $2.55 million over 20 years would make sense only to someone with Zane’s superior understand of public budgeting and spending.
Let me do those numbers again!
@Fiscal – the cost of building the geysers pipeline was less than the alternative solutions for getting rid of the wastewater. And California continues to get geothermal electricity. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Seriously, how much sweeter could it get, than a couple of years from now, Obama and the lefty cohorts look back on all the destruction they accomplished during thy ‘Anointed Ones’ term, and find that the most rewarding of all accomplishments was the waking-up of 40% of the population to the nightmare that we all now know as progressivism.
Bitter…yet sweet.
Our electricity comes from geothermal wells filled with wastewater from pipelines that just cost us hundreds of $ millions. No fossil fuels are used.
Another complete boondogle in the name of the church of climatology.
@Steveguy – the Water Agency will not be paying that $43 (story said 48?) million, nor will the tax payers. There is a public / private partnership here. It was unclear, but I’m guessing the private company gets to market the extra 3/4s of the methane gas produced. The WA will be paying at most $330,000 per year. But there will also be ongoing savings of $200,000, so the number is really $130,000 per year. If they break even after 15 years, and assume that there is a steady increase in PG&E rates, then the average cost over that 15 years would be half that or $65,000, or a total of less than $1 million over the 15 years. Nothing to sneeze at, but not $43 million either.
I can’t comprehend the short sightedness of the council. Alternative energy technoligies are advancing at such a rapid rate that the cost per watt of alternative energy will be vastly decreased in the next 5 years.
Only short sightedness stands in the way.
I’m a renewable energy kind of guy, but the Return on Investment breakeven is a bit long off for my liking. I suppose if you consider this more of a test of concept, then maybe the fact that it has any payoff potential at all is a good thing. Certainly noone besides government would even consider something like this. Unlike solar, I bet most of the technology is built here… At least the raw materials do! Where does this chicken manure go now?
One wonders if more CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere if this money was spent to upgrade our landfall, so we stopped sending 60+ diesel trucks each day to dump our garbage each in a landfill 90 miles away.
1.4 Megawatts of solar costs around $6-10 million.
Solar is known to be high in the cost to install.
They are spending $43 million .( wanna bet that it is more like $60 million ? )
When does the bleeding stop ? Why can they overspend like this ?
Rutgers Universality spent $10 million and saves $300,000 a year. This plan is to spend $43 Million, and it will cost an extra $300,000 a year for the first years.
Something seems crooked here, at least highly wasteful.
Here we go again. What a patently stupid idea that will never pencil out and addresses a problem that doesn’t exist.
Green is the way for the future, costly at the beginning but better in long term.
With all the technology available and being put into use around the world for burning garbage in general, as well as our local issues surrounding the increasing amounts and costs associated with its disposal, why would this plant be limited to just burning chicken manure and egg shells. $48 mil that could be spent much more wisely, productively, and sadly enough, with much more foresight. A child can tell you where to get your garbage, but where do you get a steady supply of manure and egg shells locally…without having to truck it in from far an wide, thereby adding to the problems of GHG emissions that the whole thing is trying to minimize in the first place? A doable and worthy step forward, but one that’s doomed by shortsightedness, and typically, limited vision.
a smart move in the right direction away from fossil fuel dependence…only short sightedness stands in the way.
This smells like another county boondoggle at the airport. If “savings” don’t materalize, how will the cost increases not be passed along to the rate payers? Who will make up the deficit, the county good tax fairy?
One just sits back in amazement at the Board of Stupervisors spending monies they don’t have on feel good projects they hope will get their names in the news.
Fuel cells are in the experimental stage and are every expensive. Again the county feels very free to spend other peoples money. I wonder if they would invest their own money in this type of project?
Given their record at predicting long-range pension returns, one would think they’d hesitate before going out 16 years for a positive return on a chicken manure power plant.
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, public officials treated public money as if it was their own.