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Biomass Plant to Tap Bull Market for Clean Energy

BY MARK LARSON

A $60 million project in southern San Diego County to build a 23-megawatt biomass power generation plant is on track to deliver electricity to San Diego Gas & Electric by late next year.

Amanda Martinez, president and chief executive officer of Bull Moose Energy LLC, the 2-year-old company building the plant, says construction is scheduled to begin in November and be complete by February of next year.

“We’ll go through seven months of testing and be in operation by December 2008,” said Martinez, who has four partners: Robert Traylor, Rock Swanson, Don Bunts and retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Joe Mobley.

The woman-owned company has four other bids in to get biomass power contracts; one other in California, and one each in Texas, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The company is funded through a combination of private, public and institutional equity.


Biomass Bid Winner

Last June, SDG & E; announced a 20-year contract to buy 20 megawatts of biomass electricity from Bull Moose beginning next year. The plant will use three megawatts of power to run itself. A megawatt can provide enough electricity to power about 650 homes.

State mandates on power from renewable resources are among the most aggressive in the country. California power companies are required to supply 20 percent of their customers’ energy from renewable resources by 2010.

As a result, plants powered by biomass, wind, geothermal and solar are in big demand statewide.

“This moves us towards that goal,” said Peter Hidalgo, spokesman for SDG & E.;

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger added another stipulation to the clean power rule. He signed an executive order requiring 20 percent of the renewable resource energy in the state to come from biomass operations.

In September 2005, SDG & E; signed an agreement with Phoenix, Ariz.-based Stirling Energy Systems Inc. to provide 300 megawatts of solar power using solar dishes in the Imperial Valley. That project is ongoing, and has an option to expand to 900 megawatts.

In November, the utility signed up 120 megawatts worth of power production from other solar and geothermal providers.


Clean, Green And Not Ugly

The Otay Mesa plant sits on 20 acres and is within an enterprise zone, an area targeted for growth and job creation. It will take ground up construction wood and tree trimmings, heat them to produce gas, and the gas will fire boilers to create steam-powered electricity.

Not only is the plant clean-air friendly, but it doesn’t have the ugly industrial multi-story oil refinery look of older biomass operations. This one has a horizontal look, and because its condensers are air cooled, it doesn’t hog water like older biomass technologies.

Older plants, with water-cooling towers, use around 400,000 gallons of water a day. This biomass plant, which also recycles its water internally, will use less than 30,000 gallons of water daily.

“That’s a dramatic decrease,” said Martinez.

Meanwhile, having the plant near its urban sources of fuel keeps costs down, both for transporting fuel to the plant and for electricity transportation.

Most biomass plants are in remote areas, said Martinez, requiring the extra transportation costs of hauling fuel hundreds of miles from urban sources. “That just doesn’t make sense,” she says.

Bull Moose is contracting with a waste hauler to collect the wood and green waste diverted from local landfills. The hauler will deliver it to the plant, chipped and “boiler ready.”

The plant needs about 450 tons of discarded construction wood and tree trimmings annually to generate electricity. Martinez isn’t worried about supply shortages.

“We think in San Diego there is five times the amount of material we need,” she said.

But in San Diego, the city-run landfill is slated to close in 2012, which will leave only two privately run landfill operations in the area.

When that happens, Martinez figures it’s a good bet that tipping fees for dumping will increase.

“We need to recycle as much as possible,” she said, noting the already high cost of dumping in a landfill. Her research shows 30 percent of construction demolition wood and 40 percent of clean wood waste is already in landfills. But that is set to change with the city’s requirement that green waste be separated out of landfills.

Richard Felago, senior vice president of business development for Waste Management Inc., the big Houston-based landfill operator, is familiar with biomass power developments in several states.

California’s green waste handling requirements are the most aggressive in the country, he said.

He’s familiar with Martinez’s work, and knows the biomass technology Bull Moose is working with.

“The critical element of it is putting all the pieces together,” he said. “They’re standing on the threshold of that.”

The plant’s gasification/oxidation technology, dubbed the Challenger Combustion System, is similar to those used in coal gasification plants.

Wood and tree trimmings go through a three-stage combustion designed to minimize emissions.

“It’s a very clean technology,” said Martinez. “There’s no natural gas and it’s self-sustaining.” The plant is touted as a “net zero carbon emitter.” That means its carbon emissions are the same as those generated naturally when wood or plant life decomposes into the ground.

The wood and trimmings gasify at 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit in an internal refractory, in which heat is reflected onto the fuel by the sides of the oven.

Exhaust gases flow into second- and third-stage chambers where remaining carbon is fully combusted. In the final stage, the hot gas boils water for steam, which powers a turbine to generate electricity.

Remaining ash is collected as an organic soil nutrient.

As the founding partner of Bull Moose, Martinez oversees all aspects of its biomass power projects, including development, financing, community relations, negotiating for power purchase agreements and equipment, real estate transactions and fuel-supply agreements.

Before getting into the alternative energy field she formed Estrella Capital, an entertainment venture capital group.

She also worked in the finance department of Aaron Spelling’s Spelling Television Inc.

But with Bull Moose, she’s found her calling.

Early on it meant lean times of self-funding and a lot of hard work.

“Essentially Top Ramen and I have become best friends,” she said. “But it’s a beautiful thing. At the end of the day, I’m doing something I absolutely love.”


Mark Larson is a freelance writer for the San Diego Business Journal.

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