Agricultural Residues: Renewable Energy for Utility Power Companies

Abstract

ABSTRACT MUCH attention is currently focused on the use of biomass as fuel. Most research is concerned with the conversion of biomass into useful energy forms: li-quids, gases, high density solids, process steam, or elec-tricity. However, the identification of expected collection and transportation costs for biomass is necessary before biomass can be conceived of as fuel. This paper presents the results of one of the first attempts to quantify the pro-cesses that must occur prior to the conversion of distrib-uted biomass resources such as agricultural and forest residues. Specifically, the results presented here of a pre-liminary feasibility study undertaken for a major Califor-nia combined gas and electric utility company indicate that distributed biomass resources can be collected, pro-cessed, stored, transported, and delivered to locally sited conversion facilities at costs competitive with other fuels. While research was performed using California data, the results are common to most of the biomass produced in the United States.