Wood-burning plants are the next big thing in electricity generation (NH)

[jpak]

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060507/REPOSITORY/605070329/1265/48HOURS

Wood chips are already starting to pile up in a storage building at Schiller Station in Portsmouth while construction workers put the finishing touches on a boiler that will burn the chips to generate electricity.

The wood-burning power project, which is owned by Public Service Co. of New Hampshire, is a model of the type of plant North Country lawmakers would like to see in Berlin to help offset the closing of the pulp mill. The $75 million Seacoast project is expected to begin generating electricity in August.

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Wood-burning power plants have been championed as a more environmentally friendly way to generate electricity; proponents say they will help wean the state from reliance on foreign oil and other fossil fuels. PSNH's 50 megawatt wood-burning unit at Schiller Station will be the largest of its kind in the state. It will burn roughly 450,000 tons of wood chips a year and produce enough electricity to power 40,000 homes, according to station manager Richard Depins.

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It will release 70 percent less nitrogen oxide, 95 percent less sulfur dioxide and 90 percent less mercury than the coal-burning boiler, Despins said.

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[babylonsister]

1. Doesn't sound too environmentally sound to me.

Cutting down forests? And I recall air inversions when I lived in CO; people were warned not to burn fires in their fireplaces due to high pollution.

[flamin lib]

2. There's enough wood fiber down in the gulf coast area to feed

one of those plants for quite awhile. Perhaps that would be one method of helping clean up, re-build and provide employment to the hurricane damaged coast while helping reduce the dependence on foreign oil as well as cleaning some of the pollutants from the air we breathe.

Too bad it takes so long to build the plant.

'Course there'll always be another hurricane . . . Start now and be ready.

[dmkinsey]

3. I would not be in favor of this

Back in the 70's we all put wood burning stoves in our houses and some towns had smog from all the people burning wood

But as for electric generation you might as well burn coal. It's more efficient

[Gregorian]

4. I wonder how long before we address the problem.

These plants operate on the west coast also. I remember the power outage we had a few years ago. I decided to go into town, and to my surprise, the entire town was up and running. The logging mill was supporting them with electricity. It is clean. I lived down the road from one, and you couldn't detect that it was even there.

But trees are meant to hit the ground and rot. Today I'm sitting here looking at the plumes of smoke coming from the mountains. They practice slash and burn in Oregon. But to use the leftover branches, I have to wonder what kind of regeneration, or regrowth, the forest could maintain over a period of time.

And then there is the issue of how many people we can provide power for. And still have forests. I think the logging industry predicts a slowdown, and this is one way to get people to give them the right to plow yet more roads, and deforest yet more land. Maybe this is a good idea for critical areas. I mean, grocery stores and businesses. Have a plant in each town. But residential? No way. There's too big a demand. 10kW per home. That's the American standard.

The issue is not how much power we can generate. It is how much power we are using. Hey, it's a good idea to diversify our energy generation.

I'd like to hear the pros and cons on this, from someone who knows more than I do. Theoretically, I can see this as a good way to go. It's no different than any other power generation facility, except the input is trees. Whether it's coal, or nuclear, it all ends up making steam for a turbine generator. Trees are like solar cells. Very efficient solar cells. I'm just not keen on losing more trees than we already are. They are important. Maybe more important being in the ground than being burned.