New York state’s largest on-farm, co-digestion biogas power plant, which will generate 1.4 MW of renewable energy, opened this week.
CH4 Biogas built and operates the plant at a dairy farm in Covington, southwest of the city of Rochester, which consumes animal and food waste.
The plant houses a 120,000-gallon co-digester to anaerobically digest local food waste and cow manure from the farm to fuel a GE ecomagination Jenbacher J420 biogas engine.
The combination will generate enough electricity to power nearly 1000 homes and will reduce the dairy farm’s greenhouse gas emissions by around 8500 tons of CO2 a year.
The project has secured $1 million in incentives from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and a $750,000 grant from National Grid to cover the costs of a new substation connecting the facility to the grid.
“This co-digestion biogas project is the cutting edge of energy technology and is an absolute revenue-producing game changer for our dairies and local economies,” says local Senator Charles Schumer.
New York state has a total of 5300 dairy farms with over 600,000 cows, the waste from which could be utilised to generate energy. To date 17 digesters are in action producing a combined 3 MW of energy and a further 17 are awaiting installation, taking the total to 6 MW.
For further information:
www.ch4biogas.com
www.nationalgridus.com
www.ge.com
www.nyserda.ny.gov/
Related stories:
UK government wastes no time investing £80 million in green fund (25-Apr)
UK Energy Technologies Institute seeks energy-from-waste partners (4-Apr)
National Grid and partners plan gas-from-waste plant in UK (28-Feb)
Prince of Wales to invest in energy-from-waste enterprise (23-Feb)
Article source: http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/i/5091/
