Chicken litter electricity coming

GAINESVILLE - If you are a Jackson EMC customer or get your electricity from another of the EMCs in the area, you may soon be using electricity partially generated by chicken litter.

A conversion plant in Carnesville is expected to begin producing electricity this fall using chicken litter from north Georgia poultry farms. It's a project of Green Power EMC, a consortium of EMCs around the state, which had hoped to have the plant up and running by this summer.

Green Power EMC President Michael Whiteside, appearing on Sunday's Northeast Georgia This Week on WDUN NEWS TALK 550 (like AccessNorthGa.com a division of Jacobs Media Corp.), said plant will produce the largest amount of electricity of the three renewable energy projects the consortium currently has on line.

"It will produce 20 megawatts of electricity at full capacity," said Whiteside, who is also President and CEO of Coweta-Fayette Electric Membership Corporation.

Whiteside said some EMCs are already are able to secure electricity for their customers through other alternative forms of energy such as biomass and low-impact hydro plants. "Methane gas from landfills in Taylor and Fayette counties is being used to produce electricity (a total of five megawatts between them)," he said, "and a low-impact hydro plant on the Middle Oconee River is generating 2.3 megawatts of electricity."

Whiteside said a low-impact hydro plant is a small hydro-electric dam on a river that uses water flow from the river - not releases from a large reservoir such as Lake Lanier - to generate electricity. He said how much power is generated is determined by the stream flow, noting that it times of drought, less power can be produced because the amount and the flow of water is impacted by the dry conditions.

He admitted those are not big numbers - and the numbers will still be just a drop in the bucket even when the Carnesville plant comes on line, but, he added "you have to crawl before you can walk and walk before you can run."

The chicken litter is coming from poultry farms around North Georgia. Whiteside said Carnesville was chosen because of the large number of poultry farms in northeast Georgia. He said if it is successful there's a good chance of opening similar operations in other parts of the state where there are concentrations of poultry farms.

In addition, Whiteside added, Green Power EMC has tested wind potential with a pilot project in Floyd County, atop a mountain near Rome. But he said it remains to be seen if Georgia has enough sustained winds to make wind-generated electricity a viable alternative in the state.

Green Power EMC is also helping students evaluate solar energy through the Sun Power for Schools program.

Whiteside said participating schools are installing systems to collect solar energy data the students will monitor in the classroom. It's the first statewide academic program of its kind and will help the next generation of students evaluate the cost-effectiveness of solar energy.