Grand Marais Public Utilities Commission (PUC) board member George Wilkes gave an update on the proposed building of a biomass heating plant that would produce steam heat for private and government buildings located in Grand Marais.
Wilkes said there have been some changes in current plans. Because the project is based on saving people money on heating bills [and keeping dollars in the local economy, among other things] and current propane costs are low, Wilkes said Mark Spurr, president of FVB energy, who has worked with Cook County Local Energy Project (CCLEP) the past four years, has decided to redo his cost estimates for customers, and he will be set back about two weeks.
“He was going off of 2011propane heating costs, but now he has put in 2012 to 2014 costs and he is going with the most conservative numbers. He isn’t going to come in with some pie in the sky numbers,” Wilkes said.
In 2014 bids to dig and install the heating lines came in $4 million higher than expected. That pushed the costs from an estimated $10.5 million to $14.5 million.
Because of high construction bids the bonding bill sought by CCLEP through the Minnesota Legislature “was dead when the bids came in too high,” said Wilkes in a report to Cook County commissioners in August 2014.
Wilkes said he would hold off on a public informational campaign until Spurr is done with his numbers and has presented them to the 17 public/private businesses that have expressed interest in hooking up to the plant.
One of the biggest hopes is to have the hospital/care center become a customer. Paul Nelson, who was also in attendance, said, “They still haven’t been able to give us what the BTU requirements will be when they add 20,000 feet to their buildings. I am going to ask them to push their engineers to get us that number. I think we will have some good news for them because it looks like we will be able to save them $100,000 on redundancy requirements.”
Wilkes said another change recently occurred when Howard Hedstrom realized that Hedstrom Mill couldn’t always produce enough hog-fuel to run the biomass facility. Originally it looked like the mill produced more than enough waste wood to run the biomass burner, but not in the winter, said Wilkes. “Howard has always said he has enough hog fuel for the plant But he has done some rethinking. The mill needs more chips in the peak of winter to supply its own heat, and they won’t have enough for us. He said the Two Harbors strand board company could get chips to us. He also said sometimes loggers come into the county with chippers. This might be a chance for a local logger to purchase a chipper and supply chips to Howard who could get them to us.”
CCLEP initiated the project in 2009 as a way for local businesses and government buildings to stabilize and reduce long-term energy costs: reduce dependence on imported fossil fuel resources; improve forest management including wildfire mitigation efforts; create jobs; keep more energy dollars within the local economy; and reduce carbon emissions.
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