Biomass backers scout Katahdin area

MILLINOCKET – Two “green energy” companies hope to partner with local investors to build a 17-megawatt biomass cogeneration facility worth about $50 million that will produce electricity for the New England power grid in about 1 1/2 years, they said Monday.

A group of investors and representatives from KMW Systems Inc. of Ontario and First National Power Corp. of Washington state met with Katahdin region officials and businessmen for almost two hours Monday to gauge support for locating the project in Huber Industrial Park.

They liked what they heard.

“I thought the response was very positive,” said Richard Lepine, director of sales for KMW, which builds biomass boilers.

The investors are more than 60 percent finished reviewing a proposal created by Jerry Tudan, owner of Peregrine Technologies. They hope to decide within a month whether to start the project at Huber, said First National Chief Financial Officer Pete Wanner.

If all goes well with permitting processes, plant operations should commence 15 or 16 months after the decision is made, Wanner said.

The plant would employ about 45 full-time workers.

“They essentially have the money,” said Tudan, who will be helping sell biomass boiler electricity at wholesale rates if the project goes through. “It’s just a matter of whether the community wants it.”

Officials from East Millinocket, Medway, Millinocket and the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce endorsed the plan.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in town that does not want this to happen,” Town Councilor Wallace Paul said. “They are ready to go.”

“Any developer like this within the Katahdin region will help the whole region,” Medway Administrative Assistant Kathy Lee said. “It doesn’t really matter if it’s in Millinocket, Medway or East Millinocket.”

Lepine and Wanner plan to be in Augusta today to meet with state officials to see what kind of tax breaks or funding is available for the project, they said.

Monday’s meeting at the Katahdin Business and Conference Center, which was attended by about 30 people from East Millinocket, Medway and Millinocket, was the culmination of about 4 1/2 years of meetings and research for the investors, Tudan, the Millinocket Area Growth & Investment Council and Millinocket Town Manager Eugene Conlogue.

As planned, the cogeneration facility would burn about 250,000 tons of tree fiber – mostly wastes – annually in a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week cogeneration facility that would have a negligible impact upon the environment.

The investors chose Huber after flirting with locations in Houlton and Medway because it has easy access to the New England power grid and the Golden Road, one of the region’s primary conduits for logging operations, via Huber Road, Conlogue said.

Huber has access to 1 1/2 million tons of tree fiber, Wanner said. It also is near a chipping mill operated by the Gardiner & Son Inc. and isn’t near any large-scale housing concentrations.

“This is an ideal location for an operation like this,” Conlogue said after the meeting.

Also, the park, which has a Pine Tree Zone designation, has ample room for partners who could double or triple the number of workers employed with the project. The partners, Tudan said, could use electricity, steam or heated wastewater to run such operations as a large greenhouse, fishery or wood mill.

A mill also could supply wood wastes that would help run the electrical plant, Tudan said.

But the partners would provide a secondary revenue source, Wanner said. The plant’s primary mission would be to make money selling electricity.

The plant also could offer wholesale electrical rates to municipalities’ town buildings, including schools and hospitals, he said.

KMW, which has built about 3,500 biomass systems around the world, including about 120 in North America since 1987, would construct the Millinocket facility, Lepine said.

Formerly known as Capstone International Corp., First National focuses on the acquisition and deployment of green energy generation solutions, including propless wind power, water purification and biomass waste energy.

The company was incorporated in 2000 and is based in Bellevue, Washington.