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Wood-Fueled Combined Heat & Power Plant
St. Paul, Minnesota
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota
Owner and Developer: St. Paul Cogeneration, LLC
Capacity: 25MW
Online: April 2003
Cost: $52 million
Saint Paul, Minnesota is now drawing on wood waste to heat and cool most of its downtown buildings while also generating electricity.
The combined heat and power (CHP) plant that exclusively burns wood waste is the largest biomass-based CHP plant serving a district energy system in the United States. It is privately financed, owned and operated by St. Paul Cogeneration, a company formed by Trigen-Cinergy Solutions and Market Street Energy Company, LLC an affiliate of District Energy St. Paul, Inc. District Energy is a private, nonprofit, community-based corporation that provides district heating and cooling services to the majority of buildings in downtown St. Paul.
Construction of the CHP plant started in September 2001 and was completed in spring 2003. The plant simultaneously produces heat and electricity making it more than twice as efficient as energy plants that only generate electricity. The 25 MW of electricity, which is enough to supply approximately 20,000 homes, is supplied to the local grid under a 20-year contract with Xcel Energy. The plant provides heating and cooling for 80% of downtown by piping heated and cooled water to buildings from its central location.
A substantial portion of the wood waste used for CHP comes from downed trees, tree trimmings and branches from around the Twin Cities area. Using this material has several benefits. By turning regional wood waste into a useful product, the system helps improve the local economy while reducing the ongoing environmental challenge of wood waste disposal, using approximately half of the 600,000 metric tons of wood waste generated in the metro area annually. In addition, the project significantly reduces air pollution by displacing 80% of the coal and oil District Energy used to burn every year. Sulfur dioxide emissions are cut by roughly 600 tons per year and CO2 emissions by more than 280,000 tons per year.
In May 2005, Market Street Energy and Cinergy Solutions won the Environmental Initiative Award in the Energy category for their wood-fueled CHP plant project. This award is given by the Minnesota Environmental Initiative (MEI) to those who exemplify the best of many outstanding partnerships taking place to solve a wide range of environmental problems facing the communities in Minnesota.
References and Additional Information:
Trigen-Energy Solutions News Release January 1, 2004
Minnesota Technology Magazine –spring 2003 “Hot Market”
Clean Resource Teams Manual Chapter 10 “Combined Heat & Power/District Energy”
District Energy St. Paul’s website “Current Activities – Combined Heat & Power Plant Construction”
