http://www.moabtimes.com/view/full_story/24700725/article-School-district-hopes-to-cut-electricity-costs-with-system-that-runs-on-discarded-vegetable-oil
School district hopes to cut electricity costs with system that runs on
discarded vegetable oil
by Laura Haley
Contributing Writer
2014-03-06
Paying for electricity to power a large building like Grand County High
School doesn’t always come cheap, but the Grand County School District
is hoping to reduce those costs with a new alternative energy source –
discarded vegetable oil.
According to Grand County Board of Education chairman Jim Webster, the
district began looking at options for an alternative energy source about
a year ago.
“We started out thinking we’d get some solar panels and get a Blue Sky
grant,” Webster said.
Grand County School District Superintendent Scott Crane said it quickly
became obvious that it wouldn’t be possible to get enough solar panels
on the school’s roof to make a significant difference in the electric bill.
“We even looked into batteries to store the energy,” he said. “What we
realized is we’d need a whole room full of batteries.”
Eric Thatcher, a consultant with Trane USA who specializes in energy
management solutions for higher education, explained that the district
was looking for a way to reduce power spikes, which prove costly to GCHS
every month.
“Anytime during the month that you have a spike, the biggest spike sets
your rate for the entire month,” Thatcher said.
Robert Farnsworth, the district’s business administrator, said the
electric bill for all of the district buildings can range from $17,000
monthly to more than $70,000 during the hotter months. Heating the high
school alone can cost as much as $5,000 per month, he said.
After looking at several different options, the district began exploring
a new technology that runs completely off of the fryer oil that
restaurants generally throw away.
Waste vegetable oil cogeneration plants are common technology in Europe,
according to Thatcher, but they haven’t really caught on in the United
States yet.
“It’s basically a tiny power plant,” Thatcher said. “It follows the load
strategically.”
That means that the series of generators could be powered when necessary
and turned off at other times. The cogeneration system will be connected
to the high school’s heating and air conditioning controls and is
designed to kick in before a power spike occurs to offset electricity
demand, Thatcher said.
Unlike a traditional coal powered plant, Thatcher said waste-oil
cogeneration plants are much more efficient.
“More than two-thirds of the fuel used to generate electricity is lost
as heat,” he said.
The cogeneration plant the school district is considering boasts 90
percent efficiency, he said.
If installed, the system would run off of the used fryer oil donated to
the district by area restaurants. That oil would then be put into tanks,
which would filter out anything that couldn’t be burned by the machine.
That oil would then be burned by a series of small Kubota motors.
Thatcher said the original proposal included one large generator that
was capable of producing 150 kilowatts. However, after speaking with the
Belgium-based manufacturer, Cogengreen, the proposal was changed to
include five separate 30 kilowatt units.
Thatcher said the smaller units offer several incentives.
“There would be less capital costs at the beginning,” he said. “It would
also allow the students in the auto shop at the high school to provide
maintenance on the units. It would be used as a learning tool.”
The manufacturer has agreed to send licensed mechanics to teach school
district personnel how to do maintenance on the units, Thatcher said.
This would allow the machines to continue to be covered under the
manufacturer’s warranty, even though the students would be doing the work.
Farnsworth said the used oil has become a “commodity,” so companies that
choose to donate it to the district could claim the donation on their
taxes. Thatcher said that could result in more of the oil being disposed
of properly.
Moab City Engineer Rebecca Andrus said the project could benefit the
community by keeping fryer oil from getting into the city sewer system.
“It can gum up the system and cause backups,” she said, adding that the
city has had issues with oil getting into the system in the past.
The school district has already been awarded a grant from the Rocky
Mountain Power Blue Sky Project in the amount of $125,000. Several other
interested donors have come forward to help support the project,
Thatcher said. The district has also applied for an Environmental
Protection Agency education grant, which would help cover the cost of
using the system as a teaching tool.
The initial price of the system is approximately $560,000 with
additional funds needed for trucks and equipment to pick up the grease.
Farnsworth said that with the money that has already been secured
through grants and donations, it should take about 12 years for the
savings to offset the cost of the system.
“The more money we get, the less time it takes to recover those costs,”
he said.
Thatcher said that there has been strong community support for the project.
“We’ve been working on this for over a year, and everyone we’ve talked
to has been enthusiastic,” he said.
“As we get the word out, there are a lot of people interested in helping
out,” Farnsworth said.
The Cogengreen system would be a first in the United States, according
to Crane. Although there are similar setups at larger institutions such
as the University of Utah and Utah State University, it would be the
first for a school district.
The school board has decided to continue to pursue the project and is
hoping to secure enough donors to cover the cost of the project.
“I think it’s a great project,” Crane said. “It would be really great
for the community.”
[While I congratulate the school on the initiative, I don't think they
really understand the potential savings from efficiency, conservation
and load management. Controlling the spike - via analysis and a
directed solution - possibly load management or peak shaving - would
probably have been a financial win for them. However, it sounds like
Trane has a product they want to sell, and I expect that is driving the
decision process. For example, this co-generation project is intended
to produce heat and electricity, while it appears the bigger issue for
their electricity bill is cooling.]
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