3 in 1 biomass plant should begin producing energy by summer
The construction of a renewable energy biomass cogeneration facility adjacent to Albany, USA’s Procter and Gamble manufacturing centre is on schedule, the $200 million (184 million euro) plant set to start producing energy and steam for its customers within 90 days.
When completed, the 50-megawatt cogeneration biomass facility will produce energy for Georgia Power, steam for Procter and Gamble and steam that will be converted to energy for Marine Corps Logistics Base-Albany.
“The project is in its final stages of completion,” Brenden Quinlivan, executive director of distributed energy origination for Constellation, the energy company that will operate the facility once it’s finished; told the Albany Herald. “There’s going to be a defined testing period, both for the power and the steam that the project will generate, and that will take its own course over, let’s call it, the next 90 days.
“Then sometime, let’s call it mid-summer, the plant should achieve full commercial operation at which point it would be selling the power that it’s contracted to sell to Georgia Power under the 20-year power purchase agreement and then the steam that we’re contracted to sell over a 20-year period to P&G as well.”
As well as supplying power to Georgia Power, the biomass plant will be an important part of Procter and Gamble’s commitment to reduce its global footprint by increasing its use of renewable energy.
“We kind of spearheaded the project,” P&G Global Product Supply Systems Leader James McCall told the Albany Herald. “P&G has a long-term goal to be 100 percent renewable across all of our manufacturing sites. That’s really kind of our long-term vision. In the short-term, though, we’ve made a commitment to be 30 percent renewable by 2020, which is significant because it’s both on our electrical and our thermal energy.
“So to make sure we can be 30 percent renewable by 2020, we needed to be able to do both small, on-site projects around the world and then also make some really big bets. Albany is one of our really big bets.”
