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PUBLIC POWER AGENCY MEETING MINUTES
January 24, 2007
Members Present: John Montone, Chairperson, Timothy C. Lattimore, William Graney, Mike Luksa, Vijay Mital and Luke Rybarczyk
Members Absent: Robert M. Buschman, Krste Biljanoski (called to say he could not make it)
Staff Present: Anthony DeCaro and Mark Storrs
One vacant position
Meeting of the Public Power Agency of January 24, 2007 was called to order by Chairperson John Montone at 5:00 p.m. Motion made by Tim Lattimore to accept minutes of December 20, 2006 and Mike Luksa seconded.
Chairperson started with going back to old business – Hydro Project and talked specifically about the hydro site on N. Division Street that has been down and hasn’t been repaired. Tony DeCaro attended meeting regarding the hydro and while he had some information that the agency had he needs to get that updated. Tony also had communication from NYSEG stating NYSEG needed to give their input, they reviewed the equipment and specs. Tony stated he needs to get a renewed quote and get approval so that a decision can be made on having the transformer that was blown out rebuilt or get a new one. In the meantime get a rental transformer in place to take advantage of water in the lake. Bill Graney asked what caused the failure of the transformer and John stated that we need to get
KayR Electric in there to go through the process. It is $12,000 to get in there and do the study and a good insurance document. A spare transformer can be put in place, temporary basis to get it up and running. John suggested getting the old transformer rebuilt otherwise you are talking about revamping that whole infrastructure down there at a cost of quite a bit of money.
Mike Long stated that Frank DeOrio stated that we could go with a larger capacity and generate more electricity. Is that true or not? John stated that the transformer is basically what is putting out the electricity to the system, it is the turbine down there that generates it so if you have a 1,000 kva turbine you aren’t going to put out any more than that, that is it. Does it make sense to go to a 1,500, which will cost quite a bit more, that is, something KayR will tell us. Let’s get the proposals from KayR. The temporary is to get us on line as soon as possible, $3,500 a month, rental period of three (3) months. KayR can get that temporary in here as soon as possible and get it hooked up and approved by NYSEG. Once a transformer is in there we can maximize
the power we are generating and adjust the flow to that, maximize what we are doing.
Tony DeCaro said in 2003/04 the Mill Street Hydro was shut down because of a play in the bearings in the generator and had a proposal from Auburn Armature to take a look at that and give us an assessment, it was around $20,000 to do that. In the meantime we also had a problem with the brake on that equipment, brake keeps it from freewheeling and had the mechanic to check it on a regular basis as the brake had the tenancy not to hold. During the next year the brake failed, burned out, burned up the engine in the generator and that is where the equipment sits now. Looking into getting Auburn Armature back to take a look at what it would cost to get that equipment running again and he am going to have them look at all the equipment that is there.
John Montone brought up the green power credits, sellable credits, worth a lot more than what the power is producing, need to get someone to tell us where we can sell those credits. Mike Long stated that Bill Bastick and the Apollo people are coming and there is someone that will be there that does green credits.
John Montone stated that Kamyar has a proposal for the digester for the Phase I, the engineering part of it, will have costs, you have grant money to go towards this project to start out. Mike Long stated there are three grants, $1,000,000 NYSERDA grant for the combined heat and power project, second grant from the Department of Energy for $891,000 and third grant from the Department of Energy for $241,000. The $241,000 grant is for engineering, but we have to ask permission to change the scope. John recommended doing that as soon as possible. The grant money will start the process, without this process we can’t even start another process looking for more grant money. John stated the agency knew some of the facts about the natural gas, the cost of burning the sludge on this end looks
good that only helps the figures that Kamyar came up with, instead of the $3.8 million we are probably back to $5 million in net revenue coming in per year, the concern was the natural gas, but the methane really isn’t a concern. Mark Storrs stated he did an analysis for this budget year on sludge and the numbers, which are conservative. Sludge comes in from Amsterdam, New York and Guilderland, New York and just got Marcellus, New York, 8 to 10 tons at $30.00 a ton. I have a Stearns & Wheeler projection from 1993 and in 1993 it was $2.35 a decatherm, it is $12 now and in 1993 this looked very feasible, but today we are loosing money. Barton & Loguidice from their 1996 study said 1,000 cfm comes off that landfill a day, based on how much you are taking into the landfill, building it up, that can go up. The revenue at the Sewage Treatment Plant, Mark calls seasonal, in the summer time we make more than we do in the winter, trucks
coming from Albany the sludge freezes our revenues go down. The incinerator is made to go 24/7, non-stop, which it isn’t. The landfill is different from the digester; landfill is unstable gas from day to day. Digester gas is a controlled environment, always maintained at 55 degrees, you get better quality, more stable gas from it. John stated with the digester in the process collection of the methane gas is going be upgraded with better piping system. We need to get this going as you can see your are loosing money from Mark’s figures, also the process of getting the collection at the landfill, get a generator and start making electricity.
Mark stated that disposal of solid waste is money, just have to market it. Ithaca has been doing this for 20 years, they bring their residual sludge to us after they digest it, and they get methane out of the sludge down there. Should go see what they are doing.
Mike Luksa asked to go back to Phase I, are we going to be able to take this, we have the volume, shut down your burner. Mark stated we could shut the incinerator down, question is do we take it to our landfill? John stated Kamyar has the answer, upgrade the landfill and you can store it on the landfill, short-term storage. The incinerator can take 5 ½ ton an hour, has never been loaded. Running an incinerator is like a wood stove, the more you feet it the hotter it gets the more self-combustible it becomes the less fuel you use. Basically the same thing with the incinerator. Sludge is high in volatile solids, we are burning it off, the more you put into it the longer you feed it the more self-combustible it becomes and the less fuel you us. Luke asked what keeps us from
doing this and Mark stated the manpower and the constant delivery of sludge. We have a contract with New England one load a day, 6 days a week. Mark hasn’t pressed them as they are a good customer and knowing the weather conditions it is tough. Mike stated that the other thing is the cost per ton and as the price of natural gas has gone up, it has driven that price up. Tim stated if we could lock in a gas price a 3 decatherm, right now it is 13 a decatherm and run 24/7, now we make money, correct? John stated you aren’t going to make money with burning the sludge. The real process here is to get moving on this. In the first study that Kamyar did all those figures. Vijay asked what the projected loss is for 12 months? Mark stated he was going over the budget and the gas and electric utility is $1.5 million, the whole Treatment Plant that is natural, electric and methane gas. $9,000 a
month is just for the incinerator, $112,000 a year micro-cost just for the incinerator, that is at 12 cents a kilowatt-hour. It is not going to change. On the gas bill the price for decatherm changes from month to month.
Tape ended.
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