By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

AUGUSTA, Ky. — The growing need for cleaner alternative energy sources has created many projects to find and utilize those sources.

The University of Kentucky (UK) College of Agriculture, along with East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) and several farmers in northeastern Kentucky, have worked together on a four-year pilot program that has taken switchgrass and used it as an additive with coal.

The warm-season native grass was raised by 20 farmers in 12 counties with each growing five acres. The grass was combined with coal at the EKPC’s Spurlock Station near Maysville, Ky. for test burns.

Nick Comer, spokesman for EKPC said so far so good on all the tests conducted thus far, prompting a possible expansion of the project. “We’re in the final year of the pilot project and we are in discussions with UK about extending and expanding it,” he said. “We haven’t actually done the test burn of the 2010 crop yet but that will happen in the near future. It’s been a learning experience for us.”

That experience includes how cost effective it is. Coal has long been a primary source of electrical energy in the country, about half to be exact, according to the American Coal Foundation.

And energy costs in Kentucky are lower than many areas in the U.S. largely due to its abundant coal supplies.

But coal is not an endless resource. At present day usage, the nation’s supply can expect to be exhausted in about 250 years.
While that may seem an eternity away or something “we” won’t have to worry about, researchers have been looking at the use of alternative energy sources for years. But it isn’t without cost, a fact that will need to be considered when thinking about an expansion of the switchgrass project.

“Certainly transportation and processing as we expect it are some issues, if we do this on a larger scale, that’s something we would have to think about. There are challenges and costs associated with that, so this has been helpful and productive for EKPC,” he said of the program.

Thus far the amount of switchgrass used in test burns has been relatively small and in a couple of different forms but every test provides information as to whether it can work long term as a valid alternative.

“It gave us an opportunity to look at, operationally, what we need to do in terms of processing and handling. On the first (burn) we just chopped up the switchgrass and put it in with the coal,” said Comer. “Last year we took pelletized switchgrass and mixed it in with the coal. Of course that’s much easier to handle but there are costs involved in the processing in turning that into pellets.”

In terms of how it burned and the impact it had on equipment, Comer said no drawbacks were seen.

“We didn’t see anything that would indicate there would be a problem to burn on a much larger scale,” he added.

That could mean as much as a 10 percent mix with coal at some point. For the most part EKPC currently uses coal for 90 percent of its energy producing fuel, but the use of switchgrass helps to diversify the fuel mix, according to Comer.
“Coal has been a reliable, affordable fuel for our boilers and certainly, we expect that’s going to continue, but at the same time we recognize the value of diversifying,” he said. “Also, occasionally there is talk about regulating greenhouse gases and this is potentially a means for EKPC to mitigate that if were under a constraint on the greenhouse gases we emit from our units. We look at switchgrass as a carbon-neutral fuel that we could put into our existing boilers.”

The next burn, like the first two, will be conducted at the same station in the same boiler, one designed to use different types of fuel sources. Comer also said that while the future use of alternative fuels is a possibility, first and foremost, EKPC wants to provide affordable, reliable power to their members.
“To a large extent that is and has been (provided by) coal and I think that’s going to continue for the foreseeable future,” he said. “But, as we look at changing regulations and laws, we need to be prepared for that and as we look at a changing market place for fuels, we need to be prepared in terms of diversity.”