Renewable ambitions go up in smoke in Nevada

Nevada prison officials have learned the hard way about the need to get the supply chain right appropriate for a biomass project

A lot of good projects have been supported by federal stimulus programs like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but you don’t always hear about the occasions when it hasn’t gone quite so well.

Nevada’s Record-Courier reports on an $8 million biomass cogeneration project at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City that has been troubled since it started up in 2007, and now faces closure.

The 650-kilowatt (electrical) facility has received stimulus funding and funds from the Forest Service, but officials at the Correctional Center have said the plant has design problems, and is not large enough to provide a profit in terms of generating electricity for sale to the grid.

In particular, the plant needs a specification of wood fuel that makes it difficult and relatively to get the right fuel.

Analysis has suggested the plant’s flaws “can’t be cured”, reports the Record-Courier, with deputy corrections director Jeff Mohlenkamp stating that if a buyer is not found for the facility, it could be shut down by the end of the summer.

“But that doesn’t mean the technology and the concept is a bad thing,” he said. “It’s a lesson learned. It doesn’t mean plants like this can’t be successful.”

On the plus side, lessons learned from the project are going to be written up in the form of a paper, which should be applied to future projects such as a new biomass facility being developed at North Lake Tahoe.