Direct and indirect costs of transporting wood chips to supply a wood-fired power plant

Abstract

Several alternative designs of a transportation system for a hypothetical 50-Mw WFPP in Vermont are reported. Two means--truck and rail--of moving the fuel, wood chips, from the harvest site to the WFPP are investigated. The design of an efficient truck transportation system must take into account vehicle weight and capacity, plant production capacity, distance to plant and time required to drive it, and comparative costs of different fleet management options. Considerations for a rail system include ease of connection to regular rail service (schedules and routes), comparative costs of owning versus renting railcars, comparative costs and scheduling problems for running plant-owned or leased unit trains, and costs of building additional track. Either transportation system will require special techniques for loading and unloading wood chips. The direct cost of both systems, with their possible variations is summarized as accurately as possible, and the general cost ranges of the two are compared. Although cost factors will vary greatly depending on the location and particular design specifications of the WFPP, it is concluded that the 35-truck fleet is probably the least-cost system in terms of capital costs. The three factors analyzed as indirect costs are highway maintenance costs, noise levels, and roadway structure problems. The analysis concludes that the specific WFPP site has a strong influence on the costs--direct and indirect--of the various possible transportation systems. For each site, a complete cost analysis is recommended, the framework of which is sketched in this study.