Interior Alaska villages making plans to increase biomass use

FAIRBANKS — Some Interior villages are already sold on biomass. Community leaders shared how they harvest energy from the forests and rivers around them with roughly 200 attendees at the Alaska Wood Energy Conference on Wednesday.

“We are a rural community that wants to promote to other rural communities that this can be done,” Tanana city manager Bear Ketzler said.

The three-day event focused on various fuel types, technologies, environmental impacts and supply issues associated with wood energy.

The Tok School installed a wood chip-fired boiler in November that is fueled by local forest thinning projects and waste wood. Project leaders described the purpose and performance of the 5.5-million BTU steam boiler.

“It’s been pure savings,” said Scott MacManus, executive director for the Alaska Gateway School District.

The system should offset 65,000 gallons of heating fuel per year, saving $268,450. It was inspired by skyrocketing energy costs. The school district was spending $300,000 per year on heat and power and was forced to sacrifice music, art and other elective programs.

“This is why we’re involved in the wood business right now, because we have to do something to maintain the quality of education,” MacManus said.

They have 40,000 acres of continuous fuel at their fingertips, more than they could ever use, said Jeff Hermanns, Tok area forester for the state of Alaska. Foresters want to remove 3,000 acres to dampen an ever-present fire hazard, but the wood is too small to turn into board.

So Hermanns and MacManus planned an energy project around the fuel source, a theme that was repeated by several conference speakers.

The scrawny spruce trees turned out to be perfect fodder for a Rottochopper grinder.

“We were told you can’t use whole trees for biomass,” Hermanns said. “We broke that myth.”

They can stuff dozens of whole trees into a grinder to create wood chips, which is cheaper and cleaner than stacking the wood into decks and burning it.

“There were 100 decks when I got (to Tok),” Hermanns said. “That’s probably three years worth of fuel for the school. We just put a match to it.”

They also have been monitoring air quality.

The boiler has an electrostatic precipitator, which filters particulates from the exhaust. It was emitting 14 parts per million during a recent test, when levels in Fairbanks were three times as high.

“You could have stuck your head in the stack, taken a deep breath and you’re doing better than you are in downtown Fairbanks,” MacManus said.

Power generation is next. The school district is collecting bids for a steam turbine to produce its own electricity, which now costs 30 cents per kilowatt hour. That will double their savings to about $500,000 annually, MacManus said.

“Which buys us a counselor, a music program, phys-ed people,” MacManus said.

Tanana also has been saving money with wood, said Ketzler, the city manager. The resource, which is dragged from the Tanana River or hauled in by snowmachine, is less abundant and more expensive — $275 per cord — than in Tok. But it still beats $6.50 per gallon of fuel and 70 cents per kilowatt-hour.

“We could pay $500 a cord and we’d still be saving money,” Ketzler said.

In 2007, the city installed two wood-fired boilers, both putting out 450 BTUs, and a new building at the washeteria for less than $100,000.

The system has replaced about 6,000 gallons of fuel — more than half — with 50 cords of wood per year. It burns at 2,000 degrees and emits no smoke, he said.

Tanana is planning 12 more biomass systems in the next year and a half at the school, senior center, city shop and teachers’ apartments, among other places.

Financing comes from federal grants, state legislative funding and private loans.

Together these projects should save 33,000 gallons of fuel per year and consume 200 more cords of wood, Ketzler said.

He plans to add solar thermal panels to the senior center and start a greenhouse to dump extra energy in the next few years.

“These kind of energy-related projects are going to be the lifeblood of keeping rural Alaska going,” he said.

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