Nebraska Public Power District hosts workshop in Grand Island to discuss renewable energy options.
Source: The Independent [Aug 10, 2003]
More than 115 Nebraska Public Power District customers from across the state gathered in Grand Island Saturday to learn more about future state energy options.
The daylong workshop was sponsored by Nebraska Public Power District and covered a wide variety of potential future energy sources for NPPD, such as wind, methane generated from livestock waste, biomass and coal. The workshop was held at College Park.
There was also a question-and-answer session between the participants and a panel of state energy officials.
According to Bill Fehrman, president and CEO of Nebraska Public Power District, the workshop was also an opportunity for the utility to hear from its customers about Nebraska's energy needs.
"The whole purpose of this conference is to get some feedback from our customers," he said. "Because of our public power status, our customers own us. Every dollar we spend is a dollar they have to pay. Because we have some fairly significant investments coming up in generation facilities for the next many years, we are very interested in their opinions."
Fehrman said NPPD is looking at either replacing aging power facilities or building new plants, such as a potential coal generating plant at the former Cornhusker Army Ammunition site in Grand Island, as power demand continues to grow in Nebraska.
"Because of the size of that investment, which could run in the hundreds of millions of dollars, we are very interested in what our customers think," Fehrman said.
Participants at the workshop were divided up in a series of programs during the daylong event to learn more about Nebraska's future energy needs and what potential sources could supply those needs.
"What I'm hearing right now is some very strong interest in some level of renewable types of resources going into the future," Fehrman said.
Each of the participants filled out a survey seeking their input on what direction NPPD should take when it comes to energy sources that will supply future power needs. Results of the survey will be released at a later date.
Fehrman said a renewable energy source is one that is non-polluting and generated by nature, such as wind, methane and water.
When looking at future energy sources for Nebraska, he said, the question is how to balance providing large volumes of power to meet the customers' future needs in the most cost-effective way with growing public demand that future energy generation be environmentally friendly.
Fehrman said achieving that balance involves generating power from diverse energy sources, including coal, water, methane and wind.
"We can build renewable wind energy resources for use on almost every day of the year except, most likely, the hottest days," he said. "Generally speaking, people think the wind blows the most during the summertime, but in fact, it blows the most in the wintertime. It's in the wintertime that we do have some excess capacity. Renewables can be used to offset those types of sources and be a very good option for our consumers."
One of the panelists was State Sen. Don Preister of Omaha. A longtime supporter of wind energy, he told the participants that electricity can be produced from wind energy for 3.5 cents per kilowatt without any form of subsidization.
Preister said Nebraska sends out of state more than $10 million annually to bring in coal to fuel Nebraska power plants. He said by investing in wind energy, we can keep some of those dollars in Nebraska. Also, rural landowners can generate royalties from the wind generators located on their land to supplement their farm or ranch income.
Preister said Nebraska ranks sixth in the nation among states in potential wind energy development. He said he would like to see about 20 percent of Nebraska's energy generated from wind power in the future.
Another panelist, Dennis Grennan of NPPD, said generating electricity from methane sources from livestock could also provide an economic boost to the state's livestock industry. He said Nebraska is seeing a huge decline in dairy cattle, which has a negative impact on cheese processing plants and other processors of dairy products located in the state.
Grennan said by allowing the livestock industry to grow, the methane generated from livestock manure can be a value-added energy source and help grow the state's livestock industry.
Duane Hovorka of the Wildlife Federation told event participants that instead of investing millions of dollars in larger energy-producing facilities that could increase Nebraska's already low energy consumer costs and pose a threat to the state's air quality and water resources, implementing more conservation practices could cut down on energy use and maintain existing generating capacity to meet future demand.
Fehrman said one of the things that NPPD is looking at is to take an alternative energy source such as wind power and use it as an economic development opportunity by selling excess wind power electrical generation to other states.
"We could bring that money back here to lower our costs to consumers," he said. "The challenge for us is that we already have very low-cost electricity in this state, so renewable projects have to be even better than they need to be on the East Coast or West Coast because they have such high energy rates already. The challenge for us is to find opportunities for renewables that are competitive with our other types of resources with the understanding that we still have to be stewards of the environment."