Sierra Pacific plans new co-generation power plant north of Anderson

Photo by George L. Winship, Editor

GREEN POWER: Some wood chips may be burned off for energy in a co-generation power plant. Sierra Pacific scheduled a scoping meeting for a proposed plant on July 21.

Sierra Pacific Industries made headway in the planning stages for a wood-burning co-generation power plant at SPI’s 121.39-acre campus off Highway 273 north of Anderson. The power plant would provide 21 mega-Watts of power, of which about 17 mW could be sold back to the PG&E power grid for profit, according to SPI spokesman Mark Pawlicki.

One mega-Watt hour produced can power about 750 average California households for an hour, said PG&E spokesman Kory Raftery.

The proposed plant would be 25 percent larger than the existing 4 mega-Watt plant. It would include the construction of “a new fuel handling building, boiler building, turbine building, cooling tower, electrostatic precipitator, ash silo, and electric substation,” according to the initial study documentation by Shasta County Dept. of Resource Management.

To create 200,000 pounds of steam for the turbines, the plant would also require 605 acre-feet of ground water per year, according to the county’s initial study. The boiler would create steam to operate a turbine which would provide the 4 mW needed to power the SPI campus and also create heat to better dry the lumber on site, Pawlicki said.

“We have not yet made the decision to build the plant,” Pawlicki said, adding that SPI’s plans were only to get the planning stages of the proposed plant completed. Pawlicki said the total cost and the project’s return on investment were still being analyzed.

A scoping meeting to introduce the project to the public was scheduled for July 21, 6:30 p.m., at the community room at Anderson City Hall, 1887 Howard St.

The nearby Wheelabrator Shasta Energy Company supplies 50 mega-Watts per hour, according to a Wheelabrator spokesman.