Public Power - June 2008 - (Page 46)

Can Prairie Hay Power Your Town? Some Midwest utilities are considering native-prairie plants for their biomass mix. BY MARC HEQUET It’s an attractive model: instead of paying a faraway coal company, you would pay the people you see on Saturdays shopping at the hardware store — farmers who grow and mow native crops. Such a setup would mean low-maintenance harvests from marginal land— which would mean more farm income. Smalltown economies would get a boost from local processing and transportation. In addition, deep-rooting natives readily survive drought, filter out pollution, require little or no fertilizer or pesticide, and create wildlife habitat. Ideally, growers could make just one pass through these acres — to harvest. Because native crops require little tending, they yield more net energy than corn. Scientists say a mix of natives yields more burnable biomass per acre—a mix that slows global warming by storing more carbon than single crops. “I think it will work. I definitely do,” said Alan Doering, associate scientist with the state-funded Agricultural Utilization Re46 JUNE 2008 search Institute in Waseca, Minn., who also farms 800 acres with his father in southern Minnesota. Biomass has advantages over wind energy because it allows scheduled burns to meet peak demand periods. Hot July days in Iowa tend to be calm in the afternoon when air conditioning demand peaks. One installed megawatt of wind in Iowa only averages about 350 kilowatts year-round, said David Rusley, manager of project services for Cedar Falls Utilities in Iowa, while coal burners typically manage 950 kilowatts per installed megawatt. With demand outpacing new power sources, utilities are watching. District Energy began burning biomass at its downtown plant in St. Paul, Minn., in 2003. With a goal of burning 70 percent biomass, it will conduct test burns this year— possibly including natives. The private nonprofit now burns mostly wood waste, selling electricity and cogenerating steam for downtown St. Paul and the Minnesota state Capitol. “There’s definitely an interest from our side to see what can be done, for example, with switchgrass,” said Anders Rydaker, president of District Energy. “There’s definitely a good chance to replace all fossil fuels.” Municipal utilities are “philosophically inclined to the local solution,” said Steve Downer, associate executive director of the Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association, but power supply remains “a big, expensive, complicated issue,” he said. Retrofitting small local plants for biomass, or building new local biomass burners from scratch might stir less rancor than building big coal-burning plants, but that “remains to be seen,” said Downer. Madelia, Minn., 120 miles southwest of Minneapolis, envisions farmers planting up to 25 percent of their land with native grasses as buffers next to streams and sloughs and in areas at risk of erosion. However, many of Madelia’s farmers rePUBLIC POWER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - June 2008

Public Power - June 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions Finding Common Ground on Climate Change Solutions A Patchwork Approach to Renewable Energy Whose Grid Is It Anyway? The Little Utility That Could Benchmarking Customer Service Can Prairie Hay Power Your Town? Storming the Control Room Investing in the Smart Grid Coming of Age: Superconducting Cables Community Broadband Economic Development Customer Service Human Resources For Governing Boards Safety Parting Shot

Public Power - June 2008

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