Cow Manure Fuels a New Power Plant

Officials of Microgy Cogeneration Systems in Portsmouth traveled to Five Star Dairy in Elk Mound, Wisconsin this week.

They went to start up the farm's new, 2 million dollar, anaerobic digester.

Company officials say the digester uses state of the art Danish technology to process cow manure.
Alan Morales is the Chief Operating Officer of Microgy.
its heated up to 130 degrees. its mixed and maintained at that temperature. and what we do is help the bacteria stay at an optimum operating temperature. so the bacteria really do all the work. they consume the things they like to eat in the manure and a byproduct of this biochemical reaction is....methane gas.

The company says the gas produced is sufficient to generate enough electricity for about 600 houses.

The Dairyland Power Cooperative is handling that power.

It's the main utility for farms in the region.

Neil Kennebeck of Dairyland says the utility sees the digester as a source of renewable energy, and is making it part of its portfolio of electric generators.

He says the company thinks the digester can be competitive against other types of power plants.
our intent was to do this somewhere around 4 and a half to 5 cents a kilowatt hour, which is about what it costs to do coal. we haven't hit that target, but i think we can. ...our costs have been higher than expected. but we're identifying ways to keep that down and i'm pretty much convinced that we can do this right around the cost of a new coal plant.

Dairyland officials also like the digester because it's environmentally cleaner than a coal plant.

Methane burning produces much less carbon dioxide and other pollutants than burning coal or oil.

And the digester also helps the farmer clean up a growing problem at livestock operations.

A dairy cow typically produces about 47 tons of waste a year.

Alan Morales of Microgy says that waste has long been an environmental headache for dairy farmers.
current farming practice is that the manure is typically collected and sits in a large open air lagoon for a period of time. some methane is naturally produced and is released into the atmosphere. we are capturing and controlling the process so we capture all the methane that would have been released into the atmosphere.

Anaerobic digesters aren't common on New England dairy farms.

The primary reason is it takes at least 800 cows to make the digester a good economic bet.

And most dairy herds in the area are much smaller than that.

But a Vermont farm with 1,000 cows recently built their own digester to produce electricity.

Earl Audet is one of three brothers who own Blue Spruce Farm is Bridport.

He says they're selling their excess power back to Central Vermont Public Service.
..they have a special program where they are asking people who are interested in buying renewable energy credits, they are paying 4 cents per kilowatt more for renewable energy.

New Hampshire Agricultural officials say they are watching the new technology of anaerobic digesters very closely.

Steve Taylor is the state's Agriculture Commissioner and is also a dairy farmer.

He says the new digesters are much more efficient than they used to be.

And that may make them more attractive to New Hampshire farmers.
i think its entirely possible that smaller farms, in other words farms with 300 cows or 200 cows at some point in the near future as oil goes up and the overall energy picture...the current trend continues...that we'll start seeing small farms looking at this as an opportunity.

Microgy officials say they hope to bring their digesters to Northeast farms.

But first they have at least two more plants to build in Wisconsin.

Company officials there are also hoping to take the technology to pig and poultry farms.