The United States has more than 2 million farms. What if each one installed a methane-to-energy fuel cell power plant?
The market opportunity may be overstated somewhat. Farms come in all sizes and not all have enough organic waste from animals or plants to run a 500-kilowatt or 1-megawatt fuel cell. Plus, the equipment can be expensive, especially if a digester is needed to decompose manure or plant residue.
But, if neighborhood farms come together to pool their investments and contribute their wastes, an active sales pipeline may develop.
The potential seems real. For example, FuelCell Energy of Danbury, CT, announced
Tuesday that it sold a 1.4-megawatt fuel cell that will be used at the Olivera Egg Ranch in California. The fuel cell will run on methane gas generated by decomposing chicken waste and power for three Olivera facilities. While the cell is large for such an operation, so is the company. Olivera sells 14 million cartons of eggs a year.
Not all farms need as much electricity. Smaller FuelCell Energy cells are running at Gills Onions, the nation’s largest onion processor, also in California. Two 300-kilowatt cells are fed by up to 300,000 pounds of daily onion peels – which are ground up and fed into a digester where they produce methane.
The FuelCell Energy says waste-to-energy facilities are part of its target market. Included are wastewater treatment plants, which also produce methane from the dirty water.
Bloom Energy, which presently is focused on corporate customers, also points to the agrarian market as a future opportunity. During a July appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival, co-founder and CEO KR Sridhar said he envisions a time in the near future when a village, such as one in Africa, could run a cell with biomass to generate electricity then distributed the energy to neighbors on a closed micro grid.
One challenge in the next few years will be cost. A 500-kilowatt fuel cell can sell for $1.7 million and require another $150,000 for installation. A digester also is expensive. Many farms will find this equipment out of reach.
Presently, typical agricultural waste-to-energy systems rely on burning methane and turning turbines rather than running fuel cells. Cargill, for instance, operates an anaerobic digester at an Idaho farm, converting manure from 6,000 cows into 1 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a month. The electricity is sold to the local power grid. Others systems operate in Washington State and elsewhere.
The difference is a fuel cell doesn’t rely on combustion. No emissions result.
Because of cost, perhaps the real opportunity will come from neighborhood or regional pooling. This will require carting waste and plant clippings, and it will change the cost equation somewhat. It will be interested to see if creative services and solutions evolve to allow this to happen.
