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Water is abundant in Southeast — it falls freely from the sky throughout the summer and fall, filling rivers and creeks that tumble down our mountains, into the lakes, channels and canals, the bays and straits that wind their way throughout the land. Here, this water has sustained humans for thousands of years, providing fish, fur and a means to navigate the region.
And for more than a century it has generated power for homes, offices and industries.
Southeast has a significant number of hydroelectric power projects, and these plants have been a reliable and relatively inexpensive source of locally produced, renewable energy for many of our communities.
But according to a draft of the recently released Southeast Alaska Integrated Resource Plan, while Southeast might have plenty of water to generate hydroelectricity, it is running short of ways to store it.
“We are storage-challenged,” said Dave Carlson, CEO of Southeast Alaska Power Agency and a member of the Advisory Work Group that assisted with the SEIRP. “(The draft plan) identified the problems we know of here, that we had more than a sense were coming. The winter time heating loads have just been skyrocketing.”
Why? Because as heating oil costs have risen dramatically over the past few years, Carlson said, “people have felt it in their pocketbooks, and have decided it’s cheaper to heat with electricity than with oil. It’s a dilemma.”
A closer look at Southeast’s energy use
“I think it’s a fair statement that the energy picture is evolving very fast for everyone in Alaska — and particularly in Southeast Alaska — due to the price of heating oil,” James Strandberg, Project Manager for Alaska Energy Authority, said.
The SEIRP was prepared for AEA by Black and Veatch Corporation, a worldwide engineering firm specializing in power production and transmission, and was funded by a legislative appropriation with additional funding by AEA. The intent of the SEIRP is to chart a regional energy strategy for the next 50 years.
An advisory work group included elected officials and representatives from utility departments, the federal government, village and regional Native corporations, and environmental organizations.
“This is the first integrated viewing of both the heating and electrical energy requirements for southeast Alaska, so we didn’t really know what to expect,” Strandberg said. “This is new ground.”
The draft plan does not reflect AEA’s or the administration’s position, said AEA spokesperson Karsten Rodvik.
“This is purely a review period; we’re looking for public participation,” Rodvik said. “It will take committed people to want to drill down and get into this, and participate in the discussion.”
That discussion may well center on some of the plan’s key findings. In addition to a shortage of hydro storage capacity, the SEIRP cites space heating conversions, an aggressive pursuit of biomass conversion programs and the economic feasibility of interties as topics of particular interest.
Heating loads are draining our hydro
According to the SEIRP, “The ‘achilles heel’ of the current hydro system is the recent trend towards conversion of oil space heating to electric space heating in those communities with access to low-cost hydroelectric.”
While switching to electric heat might seem like a good economic choice, it also is eroding reserve hydroelectric power capacities. And once that happens, communities are forced to switch back over to diesel to meet the increased demand.
“Ketchikan, Wrangell and Petersburg, Sitka had excess hydro, and so people started converting once the electric rate was so much cheaper, after diesel rates went up a couple years ago. But power consumption nearly doubled — and there goes the excess hydro, and utilities have to run diesel. And then people are trying to get away from diesel by going to electric heat. It starts perpetuating this spiral,” said Robert Venables, Energy Coordinator for Southeast Conference and a member of the SEIRP Advisory Work Group.
One option proposed by the SEIRP is a vigorous biomass conversion program. Such a plan would ease the region away from its dependence on fossil fuel, while also lightening the winter time heating loads on hydro projects.
“We should be saving the electricity from hydropower for higher value functions,” Robert Deering, Environmental Branch Chief for USCG CEU Juneau, said. “We shouldn’t be using electricity to heat buildings when biomass is perfectly suited for that — biomass can’t run computers and welders and mining equipment, so let’s use biomass for its highest value, and electricity for its highest value.”
Biomass: An alternative to heating fuel
“I support several parts of the (SEIRP) plan, such as heating with biomass,” said Tim McLeod, President of Alaska Electric Light & Power and a member of the SEIRP Advisory Work Group.
“Right now most of the heating systems in Southeast, especially in Juneau, are oil-based,” McLeod said. “If we were to try to replace that with hydro power in Juneau, we would have to double our hydro capacity. That would drive the cost up so significantly, that we don’t support the idea of converting from oil to hydro. But I see the value of moving away from oil — we have no control over it. What we, and other communities in Southeast, hope is that those people who are currently using oil, but who want to convert to electricity for heating because it’s less expensive, move from oil to wood chip. Then the electrical system can grow slowly, and it won’t drive costs up because of the infrastructure required for new projects.”
“It is in our community’s best interests, in the long run and even the short run, if people use wood chips rather than heating oil,” McLeod said.
Not everyone who has read the SEIRP agrees that biomass should be touted as the primary heating option in the region.
“We are glad the IRP addresses space heating issues, as these are a key component of energy costs for Southeast households,” said Angel Drobnica, Energy Coordinator for Southeast Alaska Conservation Council. “However the plan focuses largely on a single solution, biomass heat conversions. Biomass energy should be explored and can have positive benefits for our region, but so should efficient electric heating options, such as heat pumps and other technologies.”
Proponents of biomass, such as Nathan Soboleff, Sealaska’s Renewable Energy Coordinator, cite the energy source’s stable pricing and low volatility as good reasons to convert.
Soboleff said that Sealaska Plaza converted from oil to wood pellet heating in 2010, motivated both by economic reasons as well as the opportunity to showcase a technology that is still relatively new to Alaska.
“We have saved over $45,000 a year by heating with pellets over oil, and that savings is based on heating oil at $4 per gallon — and everyone in Juneau knows that last year we were paying more than $4 per gallon,” Soboleff said. “We were effectively heating last year for $2.52 per gallon for heating oil, but burning pellets instead of oil. And we spent no more maintaining our pellet boiler than our oil boiler.”
The cost of the conversion from an oil system to a pellet system will be paid back in 4 1/2 years, Soboleff said.
The Coast Guard is currently replacing three oil boilers with pellet boilers at Air Station Sitka.
“The overall cost of the conversion was $1.8 million,” Deering said, “and will displace about 80,000 gallons of oil usage per year. The cost savings are getting better because the price of oil keeps going up.”
The SEIRP encourages an 80 percent replacement of heating oil with biomass in ten years.
“The plan as it is in draft form is perhaps one of the most aggressive plans worldwide for converting to biomass heating,” Soboleff said. “We’re really excited to see what kind of reactions the rest of the world would have. Of course, it’s just a plan, but great big ideas always start out as a plan.”
Sourcing biomass
Many involved with the SEIRP are hoping that wood pellet biomass emerges as both a heating alternative and a viable industry in the region.
“The hope in the region is that at some point, if we regularly use wood pellets, local job and manufacturing could be developed,” Venables said.
“This could help to keep a small but viable timber industry alive,” he said. “Only a percentage of logs harvested are good for sawing, and there’s a low utility grade that could be used for making pellets.”
How much wood does it take to create these pellets?
“As we’re looking at supply and at using local sources as supply, what is really striking to me is actually how little it takes to meet our needs compared to the amount of wood that is available,” Deering said. “In addition to logging residues and mill residues, one source of supply is young growth, which is about 40 to 50 years old. There is about a million acres of it in Southeast, and about 750,000 of that is part of the Tongass National Forest. Of that 750,000, about 250,000 potentially has no restrictions on it for logging, is not part of a national monument like Admiralty Island, is not a wilderness area, or part of setbacks for stream buffers — it is available to be harvested.”
“If you used only that young growth as your fuel supply, and you wanted to replace all of our heating oil usage in Southeast entirely, you would need less than 2,000 acres a year,” Deering said. “So you’re looking at a harvest rate of less than one percent per year.”
Until a large scale use of and demand for wood pellets is established in the region, Soboleff said, local biomass users such as Sealaska are importing pellets from down South.
“Our importing of pellets is just as reliable as everyone else importing oil heat,” Soboleff said. “But we want to eventually have a locally grown, made and owned wood pellet heating resource, and we can do that but it takes a commitment from the region, from municipalities, state government, federal government and private business owners that own large facilities. We could easily create the demand overnight if we got a dozen large facilities to convert to wood pellets.”
Daniel Parrent, Biomass and Forest Stewardship Coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service, acknowledges there are concerns about carbon emissions from wood pellet stoves.
“Some people might argue that it’s not carbon neutral, but when you consider that you’re not precluding forest regrowth — that new trees are going to grow back to replace the trees you cut down — those new trees recapture the carbon that was emitted from the trees you burned,” Parrent said. “It’s about 95 percent carbon neutral — yes there is a small price to pay for harvesting and processing and transportation, but biomass energy is about 95 percent carbon neutral.”
Soliciting public comment
Whether the region turns to biomass conversion as a way to mitigate rising fuel costs, or continues to explore the feasibility of various hydro projects or transmission lines, or pursues demand supply management and energy efficiency programs — or all three — one of its advisory board members said that the primary goal of the plan is to bring attention to Southeast’s current energy challenges.
“It’s one thing to have a report, and another to really let people know we have a problem,” Carlson said. “People can’t solve a problem if they don’t know it exists.”
AEA is currently gathering public comments for review, Venables said.
“Ultimately the legislature itself will take a look at the plan, and legislative hearings will be scheduled at some point,” Venables said. “But as a directional document, the SEIRP was never meant to set policy or tell the legislature or communities what to do; it shows options and pathways that can be followed to achieve expected results.”
“And the communities, individuals and their selected officials will have to decide,” Venables added, “individually and collectively, what they want their energy future to look like.”
• To read the Southeast Alaska Integrated Resource Plan onine, visit the Alaska Energy Authority’s website at http://www.aidea.org/aea/.
Comments (50)
Add commentSounds great!
Now we just need some of the plumbing and heating co.'s in town to do some research and carry wood pellet boilers. No one is really interested in them yet.
Local plumbing and heating companies do carry pellet boilers...
Pellet boilers are available locally from local plumbing and heating companies, but they are for larger buildings than homes, they also carry comparably sized price tags.
Pellet stoves on the other hand are available at Alaska Hearth Products, Cameron's Plumbing, Don Abel, and Home Depot to name a few. Pellet stoves are like wood stoves and monitor oil stoves in that they only head the immediate area.
Wow
Wouldn't that be great if someone could start a manufacturing business making wood pellets right here in Southeast? Buying my heating fuel locally would be great!
My family will soon be in the market for a new stove and had been planning on a Monitor or other oil, but have been discussing a pellet stove instead. This makes me lean more to that side of things.
Last time anyone looked
At manufacturing pellets in southeast they identified several show stoppers.
1. The only way to produce pellets in a economically feasible way was if they were a by-product of some other wood market. And that of course requires logging on a larger scale than a couple of thousand acres, something that cannot be sold to some of our "green" friends regardless of the color of the bow you tie around it.
2. Those good quality pellets that you can buy are made from hardwood because it renders a far higher BTU value per pound of pellets. In southeast the only useable resource is softwood and the BTU value per pound is far lower.
Flawed thinking, folks...
~Ah ha~ made a good comment - but even that comment simply scratches the surface. The facts are that it is not an accident that our grandfathers switched to oil heat over wood heat 70 years ago. Going back to the future and heating with wood or wood products will never work. It is a problem in scale. Just think about it.
If you have a cabin or two in a remote location, like say, Point Baker or Warm Springs Bay, wood is great. You haul logs home by water, chop 'em up and dry them out and you can heat with wood. Heating 10,000 homes with wood, would require square miles of cut forest. Remember that famous photograph of 50 acres of logs piled 10 feet high just to feed the power plant at the University of Alaska/Fairbanks for 2 months? Pellet stoves only work effectively when you have a surplus of dry sawdust from a sawmill or manufacturing plant that makes wood products. Then you are simply utilizing waste products. No problem. You will never get enough dry wood by-products out of all S.E. Alaska to power up 10,000 homes, let alone enough to make wood a viable heat source for all S.E. Alaska. You would have to heat around 60,000 homes to do that.
By the time you cut the trees down, haul them to a plant for processing, dry them out, process them into pellets, transport them again to the consumer, the cost has gone way up, and I won't even discuss the smoke, ash, carbon dioxide and monoxide, all of which must be 'disposed of properly' (heh heh heh) Do that for a few years, and you will run out of timber resource. I am sure there are geezer's would would like to haul wood around for a living, but that is living in the past. It's like the fad recently, where some diesel aficionado's thought it would be groovy to run their cars on used deep-fat oils from restaurants. Great idea, for maybe 10 cars. You still have to play with the fuel, and the cars, but you can make it work. Problem is, all the restaurants in Juneau only use enough oil for maybe 10 cars, plus there is a lot of processing and moving the stuff around. It's not worth it because there are probably at least 10,000 cars in Juneau alone.
There is good news in the near future, wireless transmission of energy, Thorium reactors, small solar energy machines, new energy and insulation systems. We should not throw any sawdust away, but we should not go back to the future and scale up wood for heat. That would be really, really dumb. So we spend millions of dollars on old technology, then when the new stuff becomes available, we have already 'upgraded' to dinosaur technology - and spent millions to do it. Great.
Spoorprint is way smarter than black and veatch
Ah ha also makes a good point - that this can't be sold to the green groups because a local pellet industry at the scale desired by Sealaska, the Forest Service, the Coast Guard and Parnell needs a massive increase in old growth logging and some green groups are already fighting the EPA over how it regulates biomass at a national level, including lawsuits. Every timber project gets litigated but I have yet to hear of anybody being sued over heat pumps or solar heating. The real reason for all this biomass stuff is nothing more than an additional subsidy to bail out Sealaska and other timber operations that are losing money and it seems likely to just be throwing good money (the public's) after bad (corporate and public managers of timber forests).
Business as usual on the Tongass and this is bad business.
BIOMASS
FOR EVERYONE'S INFORMATION WE HAVE CONSTRUCTED A PELLET MILL IN KETCHIKAN AND WILL START PRODUCTION OF PELLETS FROM MILL BI-PRODUCT THIS WEEK. OUR INTENTION IS TO SUPPLY LARGE COMMERCIAL AND PUBLIC BOILERS AT FIRST. WE ARE CURRENTLY DELIVERING PELLETS MANUFACTURED OUT OF STATE. THERE WILL PROBABLY NEVER BE A 100% REPLACEMENT OF OIL WITH BIOMASS BUT AS LONG AS THE COST BENEFITS OUT WEIGH OIL OR HYDRO SHOULDN'T WE BE CELEBRATING THE FACT THAT WE ARE CREATING AND SUPPLYING OUR OWN ENERGY NEEDS LOCALLY? WE ALL BENEFIT FROM KEEPING CAPITAL IN THE REGION, CREATING EMPLOYMENT AND REDUCING FOSSIL FUEL CONSUMPTION. STAND BY FOR UPDATES.
LARRY
Why is the Coast Guard so
Why is the Coast Guard so interested in pushing wood pellets?
If you put Coast Guard and wood pellets in the search box above, 6 articles come up.
I think it's a pilot program Calypso
Rumor has it there is a leftist agenda to power the Coast Guard patrol vessels with pellet power.
What have you heard?
And thanks Larry, but we're reading what you have to say. No need to yell.
@spoorprint
Your assertions about the misguided-ness of heating with wood are overblown. Old growth forests are not at risk of being logged for wood pellets. Previously logged areas that need thinning are prime candidates to provide the wood needed to make pellets. Have you ever seen a pulp wood logging outfit? The reality TV show called "American Loggers" on Discovery shows what size trees they use for pulp wood. They are teeny trees compared to our typical lumber logs. Controlled thinning is a very valuable forestry management tool and would provide the wood needed.
On top of that, the roads used for the past logging are available for reuse. That's a significant savings and reduces the price for harvesting those trees. It also allows for addressing problems such as collapsed wood bridges that are impeding fish passage.
We live in the worlds largest national forest and the amount of harvest-able wood and rate of regrowth mean that we will never have to log every hillside, let alone run out. Burning wood to heat a home makes perfect sense.
By pellitizing it you can use it as a controllable fuel source to provide highly effect heat. You won't power your car with wood, save oil for that. You won't turn on a light or watch tv with wood, save electricity for that. Heating a home with a wood pellet boiler that is optimized for reduced emissions, heat out put and ash collection is the way to go. Why import oil, if even just from the North Slope, when you can use local, renewable, 95% carbon neutral, wood instead?
Lastly, the comment about needing hardwood pellets is also misguided. Do you see ANYONE importing hardwood cord wood?! No, you burn what you have and deal with the minor increase in ash. Did you know that many people in the Midwest burn corn in their pellet stoves/boilers?
Actually Calypso...
That's a good question. We don't normally agree, but I do on that one. The person to ask, as Johnny be good hinted above, is Bob Deering over at the Coast Guard Civil Engineering Unit. He’s in a position of influence regarding USCG shore facilities and he's been pushing this technology for a few years now. I don't know if he has a stake in it, if he's just looking for a legacy to hang his hat on, or if he truly believes it has merit.
I'm pretty sure Bob was StillBob, whom I sure you recall from this forum. I point that out because StillBob used to show up in all of the pellet fuel threads singing its praises. That's fine, if you're a private citizen. However, if you’re a government official in a position to shape policy, I don’t think it is appropriate be online anonymously trying influence public opinion about the matter.
you can't see the forest, for the tree in your back yard
Biomass as a fuel is proven technology and new developments will make this resource a valuable component of renewable energy in our communities. We should be discussing the question of how to successfully utilize the resource found regionally. The small communities of SE are in need of managers with a focus on local development of local reources to provide independance and economic stability. Although I agree that pellets are not the only answer, Biomass must be a part of a plan when you consider its ability to remove portions of our waste stream and turn it in to energy. For example, torrefaction technololgy exists that will allow for any organic carbon based material to be reduced to simple element form similar to coal without sulfur and other harmful components. One small community in SE produces 200 tons of cardboard another over 400 annualy and then pays a barge to haul it away. Add in construction waste, lot clearing debris, and a steady chip supply from local industry and the possibility of biomass as a complimentary fuel source to wind, geothermal, and hydro can be the foundation of a balanced approach to regional energy needs.
If you look at the spreadsheet...
You will find that right now pellets are cheaper to use than oil. with the price per ton of pellets at $393.74 and the price for oil at $3.74 a gallon if you use pellets to heat it is like heating with oil that costs $3.33 a gallon. You save $00.41 a gallon or assuming a 1000 gallon a year oil use about $410 a year.
this all assumes several things;
1. you install a high quality pellet boiler
2. you use high quality HARDWOOD pellets that have a high BTU /pound burned yield. (pellets from softwood are far less efficient)
3. Assuming that the price differential between pellets and oil does not change to favor oil. (and it has gone back and forth in the years I have been using pellets)
LARRY
If you have built a pellet mill why are you delivering pellets from somewhere else?
What BTU per pound burned do you expect from your product?
What is the percentage of ash you expect from your product?
What is the price per ton FOB Juneau?
@ah ha - you forgot to figure
@ah ha - you forgot to figure the cost of the pellet boiler into your cost savings(?) equation.
@49er - I don't doubt that there's some "leftist agenda to power the Coast Guard patrol vessels with pellet power" after what BO told the soldiers at the Buckley air base in Aurora last week.
"The Navy is going to purchase enough clean energy capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year," Obama said. "That's not going to cost taxpayers a dime. What it does mean is that the world's largest consumer of energy -- the Dept. of Defense -- is making one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history.
"And that will help grow this market and strengthen our national security."
So there you go...
@Calypso
I did not forget, it took me ten years to get even. Everyone has a different cost depending on what kind of stove you install... they can go from $1500 for a cheap pellet stove up to many thousands for boilers.....
BTW; As near as I can tell, According to what Sobeloff told the Empire he had been paying $4.00 a gal for oil. I did on one occasion in Sept 2008. Based on the delivery size he should have been getting a real good break on his oil that I could not since my deliveries are all less than 400 gal. I think he is padding the heck out of his numbers to make it look better than it really is.
I have worked in the heating
I have worked in the heating industry for many years. I always enjoy seeing new systems and alternative fuel systems evolve through out the years and I have dealt with hundreds of oil fired systems and a handful of wood and pellet systems in the interior of Alaska. One thing I can say is that the routine maintenance and cleaning of a pellet system versus an oil fired system, is that the pellet system requires much more attention and servicing. The amount of ash these systems produce is ten times that of a properly installed oil system.
@Johnny b
Amy, is that Amy
Amy Condra
2011 – Present: Secretary for the United States Coast Guard, Civil Engineering Unit
Do a google search for Bob Deering and Kyle Johansen and see if any names ring a bell...
Comments
HanSolo, Johnny b good, and AH HA,
You have made some allegations on this board that merit a response.
1. Amy Condra - Yes, Ms. Condra is a Coast Guard employee in the same office that I work. I am not her supervisor. She recently came to us with an extensive journalism resume from back East, and has written several free-lance articles for the Empire. She became aware of our biomass projects and the IRP report, and decided that she wanted to write an article for the Empire on this important subject. She approached me with an interview request. I agreed and suggested some other parties that she should interview for background.
Ms. Condra researched the subject thoroughly and interviewed many people before producing an excellent independent piece. If you are looking for some sort of nefarious collusion here, I'm sorry to disappoint you.
2. Personal gain - your unsubstantiated suggestions that I am promoting a transition to biomass, both regionally and within the Coast Guard, for some sort of personal gain are baseless, and frankly, offensive. I have no financial stake in this subject, other than as a Southeast citizen who pays for energy like the rest of you.
3. Project feasibility - The Coast Guard biomass conversion projects have been thoroughly and independently studied by Department of Energy experts as well as third party engineering consultants. The feasibility and economics are sound, and will save the Coast Guard (and tax payers) a very substantial amount of money over the projects' lifespans. The decision to fund these projects is made at a level well above mine.
4. Fuel costs - the Coast Guard procures its heating fuel through the worldwide Defense Fuels contract administered by the DOD Defense Logistics Agency. The most recent DLA contract cost for heating fuel is just slightly under $4 per gallon, and represents about a 30% increase over a year ago.
5. Cost increases - Department of Energy projections indicate oil costs will be at 50% higher (in today's dollars) in ten years, and perhaps substantially more. This will have severe consequences for the entire region due to our very heavy reliance on oil in nearly every aspect of our economy. As the IRP Report spells out very well, rising oil prices will also add unsustainable heating loads to our hydro utilities.
If you have better ideas on how to meet our region's growing energy needs, by all means spell them out. We need broad engagement on this subject, or as the Coast Guard might say: "All hands on deck!"
If you have questions regarding the Coast Guard biomass projects, I am happy to discuss them with you. Simply contact the Coast Guard and you'll be routed my way. If you have questions regarding my personal interest and advocacy for this subject, I'm easy to find - I'm in the phone book.
Bob Deering
GEO THERMAL WELLS should be in every neighborhood, not Biomass
Biomass? Is this a pitch for the timber industry.
What we should do is develop Geo thermal wells in Alaska or other sources.
What we dont need to do is spend time converting to a system that only works to put more carbon dioxide into our atmosphere.
Alaska already has an alarming ocean acidification problem.
AELP is using Geo thermal so is CBJ and other places.
Our state has the means and we should use our money and invest in building Geo thermal wells for Alaskans.
Our forests are the most cost effective way to combat climate change and we need less carbon dioxide falling into our already acidic ocean.
It might only take a few
It might only take a few years to grow a tree but it takes hundreds of years to grow a forest.
The timber industry should grow their own trees in tree farms (like they do down south) and keep their hands off our forests. Our forests are public land and belong to the people, not to industry.
Not just pellets
I was disappointed that the article only talked about wood pellets for use in a biomass boiler. There are many successful biomass boiler systems that are in operation that can run on any type of wood source. Fresh cut sawdust, chipped pallets, chopped up tree stumps, etc. I have seen several of them in operation and they run really well.
Pelletizing of wood takes electrical and heat energy to make and dry the pellets, so it actually increases the cost of the fuel to the end purchaser. Still cheaper than oil, but as more people switch to pellets it will go up in price just like any commodity. Pellets ship and store much easier than wet sawdust so that is their advantage, but if you have a nearby waste wood source pellets aren't the most economical choice. Just something else to consider.
@RDeering
I really hope you do more accurate work for the coast guard than what you are showing here.....
A careful review shows that I made no allegations directed toward the coast guard or toward you nor were there any that a normal person might misconstrue as such. In my postings here I directed questions to the alleged pellet producer from Ketchikan regarding his product and I also noted apparent exaggerations or otherwise discrepant figures given by Mr. Sobeloff who is, I believe a employee of SEAALASKA and whose numbers I am still very suspicious of.
BTW: I received my latest oil delivery this morning. The going rate is $3.74 for number two heating oil delivered in Juneau in less than five hundred gallon lots.
If the best deal the Coast Guard can negotiate is "slightly less than four dollars a gallon" when they buy in the bulk that they need to then perhaps we need to revisit some leadership positions in the Coast Guard.
@Rdeering
You can make your apology here or if you like i could stop by the Chief of Staff's office and ask for one there....
@AH HA
Not all of my points were targeted toward your specific comments. In particular, I was responding to some fuel pricing posts you made.
The Coast Guard, per HQ policy, purchases all of its fuel through the DOD - DLA contract. In some locations that turns out to be slightly higher than local prices at times, in others it's much lower. Using this contract frees the agency from having to manage a large number of local fuel contracts internally, which is a staff-intensive effort.
The contract fuel prices build in future price inflation since the contract price is fixed over an extended period of time, while the price you might pay tomorrow morning could be substantially higher than what you paid this morning.
If you still feel an apology is warranted, by all means stop in and I will try to accommodate you in person.
I'd Rather burn coal
Than be a part of a SEACC "Consensus"
First off, alder has an
First off, alder has an extremely high BTU. We seem to have lots of it around. The previous poster had a good point to, that cardboard, wood chips, pallets, construction scrap, grass clippings, leaves etc all can be used to make pellets. And yes we are only importing our oil from the North Slope, but it is by way of the down south refinery.
We put in an oil stove a few years back. One of the little gravity fed deals. It seemed easy enough. A few things have come to light. Its a pain to plumb in the oil lines, if it leaks your whole house will smell like diesel, its a pain to start, its even harder to start when its cold out, if the wind isnt right or its too cold out you lose draft and it runs like crud, it smells like burning oil even on the days with good draft.
My wife had argued against the pellet stove, mostly due to concerns about the future availability of pellets, and that it still requires electricity and the gravity fed oil stove will work in the event of a power outage. We found we either left the oil stove on all the time due to starting challenges, even if we didnt need it on, or we left it off and dealt with no heat during the power outages since they seem to coincide with the really cold weather that makes starting the oil stove hard. We have a pellet BBQ and absolutely love it. It starts easy and it isnt even an auto start. The new pellet stoves are all automated, clean and efficient, at least all the ones I saw at AK Hearth. They can have a thermostat control, firing up when you need heat and then standby when you dont. I will be switching soon.
Kudos to Mr Deering and his crew. Thinking outside the box is whats needed to address the problems associated with being in the box. I would like to see the recommedations of the Cold Climate Research Center in Fairbanks made a part of code. Why allow your heat to leak out of your building? It will cost more initially, but save a ton for the life of the house. Also, we need to switch to LED technology. It just makes sense, dollars and cents.
Nope, sorry, still flawed thinking...
I notice most of the comments do not address the problems I mentioned in my earlier post. I am regretful that any ~Alaskacutie~ feels that my remarks are overblown. However, the idea that people are going to make a living cutting down Alders - make that Green Alders, and bundle up softwood and haul it off to be dried out and processed into pellets for clean heat is very flawed thinking. If someone has a sawmill, with sawdust byproduct, sure, sell it. Pellet proponents still cannot intelligently deal with the scale of this issue. We need clean, preferably local energy sources. Those solutions are currently possible, and there are new heating and energy technology right around the corner. It is really astounding, the number of people who have obviously never heated with wood, and they think you just put green soft wood in a stove and magic happens. Just try to tell you wife to clean out & replace the guts of a 3 year old wood stove or boiler. You will end up sleeping on the couch. Pellet stoves are flat out outdated technology, no matter how well you try to dress 'em up.
Spoor, you really have no
Spoor, you really have no understanding of how they make pellets, do you? They heat it and dry it in the process of making the pellet. In the midwest they use corn cobs and corn stalks. I think we could do just fine with alder, or the grass from cutting your lawn, or selective thinning of the devils club around here. But maybe your right in that there are lots of local sources. Mind if we put a wind turbine in front of your mouth because there sure seems to be a lot of hot air spewed?
Off the mark
Do a Google search for Bob Deering + Strait of Hormuz if you want the real story. He's behind the whole thing, driving up the cost of oil to make pellets look good. Wouldn't be the first time a government agency manipulated world affairs to push an agenda, remember when Kennedy started Vietnam to boost microwave sales? Get your facts right before you mouth off you anonymous trolls.