Greenville Steam Co. in line for $500,000 federal grant

GREENVILLE – Funding to help Greenville Steam Co. become more efficient has been included in a federal 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations bill passed Tuesday by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill, which includes $500,000 for the Greenville Steam Efficiency Demonstration Project and $95,000 to complete the design for a channel and anchorage project in Bass Harbor, now will need final approval by the Senate, which is expected this fall. Should there be revisions, the bill would bounce back to the House for approval, Monica Castellanos, press secretary for U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud, said Thursday.

“I’m very pleased to be able to secure funding for these important projects,” Michaud said in a prepared press release. “The Greenville project could be a model for biomass facilities across the nation, and the funding for Bass Harbor is critical for the completion of the channel and anchorage project.”

Scott Hersey, general manager of the 16-megawatt Greenville Steam wood-fired power plant, said Thursday that he is excited about this opportunity. “We’re reviewing the technical options in order to meet the grant specifications,” he said.

The grant application was made with help from the Composite Technologies Centers, a nonprofit technology incubator focused on the wood products industry in Greenville.

The federal funds are expected to help leverage about $6 million in private sector investment for the plant upgrade.

According to the grant application, Greenville Steam Co. would increase electricity production and reduce emissions at its plant through an innovative application of current technology.

The project would provide significant economic and environmental benefits at the plant and, more importantly, would have potential applicability at hundreds of biomass and fossil-fueled power facilities around the nation, according to the document’s authors.

Specifically, the project is expected to capture substantial waste heat as well as pollutants from power plant emissions and use the recovered heat to remove significant moisture from the plant’s wood-fuel supply before its combustion.

This would be accomplished through installation of an advanced condensing heat exchanger adjacent to the plant’s emissions stack, and an integrated wood-drying system.

The company has a plan, according to the application, to upgrade the power plant over the next year with new combustion and emissions control technology that would qualify it to sell renewable energy certificates.