SustainableBusiness.com News reports that California’s Inland Empire Utilities Agency has commissioned a 2.8 MW fuel cell combined heat and power plant run on biogas – the largest U.S. installation of its kind.
The installation at a wastewater treatment plant in Ontario, Calif., uses fuel cells from FuelCell Energy that use an electrochemical process to convert biogas to electricity, in the process reducing nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and particulate matter emissions by 70 to 90 percent, according to the website.
“The fuel cell allows Inland Empire to move closer to its strategic energy plan goal to go ‘Gridless by 2020’ with almost no capital outlay by the agency,” board president Terry Catlin told the website reporter. “Our plan is to minimize our dependency on energy purchased from the grid and to be able to operate completely off the grid during peak energy usage periods.”
Anaergia Services designed and financed the project under a 20-year power purchase agreement. the company is behind more than 1,600 similar projects globally, according to the article.
Read more at http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/24176
