Making the grade
The project broke ground in January 2005 and the fuel cells were installed by the end of last April. All four units were mechanically complete on April 29, with Unit 1 reaching full power on May 14 and the last unit on May 20, 2005. The longest wait on this project was the six months it took the fuel cells to be delivered.
Operations and maintenance of the plant couldn't be easier; in fact, it has no full-time operations staff on-site. FCE monitors all of the key operating parameters of this and its many other plants from its remote operations center in Connecticut, through a secure, 24/7 Internet connection. If anything appears amiss, a specialist can immediately dispatch the technician dedicated to FCE's northern California installations.
The economics of the fuel cell plant have held their own, even when gas prices spiked last year. PG&E's average rate is about 12 cents/kWh. The plant's variable generating costs have settled out at about 5 cents/kWh (with $6/mmBtu gas), excluding the costs of capital, overhead, and the long-term service agreement. Over their first year of operation, the fuel cells supplied about two-thirds of the brewery's electrical load. Grossman describes the plant's reliability as "in the high 90% range." Virtually all of the few problems that have arisen involved water treatment or components external to the fuel cells, and those were resolved quickly.
With beer, every drop counts
Never content with his firm's efficiency or environmental performance, Grossman is now seeking to reduce his natural gas bill by using the gas by-product produced by the brewery's on-site water treatment plant, which also handles the wastewater produced by beer-making (Figure 3). Anaerobic digestion of the wastewater—which contains spent grain and yeast—produces so much methane-rich biogas (about 850 Btu/scf) that recovering it could replace up to 40% of the natural gas currently burned in the fuel cells.
3. Best brew. Brewing an award-wining beer begins with selecting the best hops. Courtesy: Sierra Nevada Brewery
Recovering the gas would not only put a large dent in the brewery's natural gas bill, but it also would represent SNB's continued commitment to reusing/reducing/recycling wherever possible. The biogas retrofit was scheduled to have gone live this July (just after press time), and SNB is slated to assume ownership of the project 30 days after its successful commissioning. This seems to be another example of how Grossman has again broken the code for making environmental stewardship good business.
And he's not done yet. Grossman says he is finalizing a deal with PowerLight Corp. (see the profile of the Bavaria Solarpark on p. 36) to install a 0.5-MW photovoltaic (PV) plant adjacent to the brewery in July, with a projected in-service date of early 2007. A PV system is a good match for any brewery, because summer is prime time for beer-making and -drinking. At SNB's facility, that's when electrical demand peaks at 1.7 MW.
Next time you're in Chico, find time to tour the brewery and fuel cell plant and enjoy lunch or dinner at the Taproom and Restaurant or a concert at the 350-seat Big Room located right at the brewery. Just tell your boss the plant tour took longer than expected.
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