MISSOULA — The wood products industry is continuing to face challenging times and the need to diversify their portfolios is top of mind for many sawmills and wood product manufacturers.
During this month's wood product round table, the group discussed the potential of biomass power generation.
Biomass power generation is exactly what it sounds like, taking wood residuals — chips, bark, and shavings — and burning them to produce power.
One sawmill, F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber in Columbia Falls, already has a biomass power plant within it. The plant within the mill produces 2.5 mega watts of power, some of which goes to Flathead Electric Co-op, which then sells it to its customers in the Flathead.
Biomass power generation is a renewable energy source, with the wood residuals being burned to heat a boiler which then pumps the steam into a turbine to create power as well as dry the wood from the mill and heat their buildings.
However, there are several challenges that face biomass power plants, mainly obtaining enough fuel to burn. It takes roughly 45 truck loads a day full of biomass to properly fuel the plant.
That proves to be a difficult challenge for the mill as, despite the amount of biomass that exists in Montana, not all is easily obtained. There is also competition for the fuel.
With that difficulty also comes a monetary cost to the power. The power generated from the plant is roughly two to four times the cost of other methods of power generation.
“It’s pretty expensive to make power out of wood. There’s a lot of capital investment, you have to actually pay for the fuel and so getting biomass from a forest management project delivered to a co-generation facility is expensive” explained F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber general manager Paul McKenzie.
Biomass still remains on the table as an option despite its challenges as the industry continues to look to diversify its offerings.
And, in the face of a changing climate where renewable energy is the the way forward, biomass may be able to help fill in the gaps that exist within wind and solar power.
