herald- page 3

By JOHN DORSCHNER
dorschner@MiamiHerald.com
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The Navigant study reported most types of biomass power's present costs are one-tenth to one-third of solar power's. Even in 2020, assuming major technical improvements for solar, the study found that in one likely scenario, solar will be a viable power source at about 23 cents/kWh, while much of biomass will be at 0.82 to 12 cents/kWh.

Still, Florida biomass producers complain they're not getting paid fairly. Florida Crystals and Covanta Energy, which converts garbage to power, say they often get only 6 or 7 cents/kWh from utilities. FPL reports that so far in 2008 it has paid about 4 cents/kWh for electricity produced by biomass resources -- about a third of what its customers pay the utility.

These rates are generally based on ''avoided cost of electricity,'' meaning a wholesale price that a utility says it avoids by buying alternative power.

''The utilities can low-ball us, and there's nothing that we can do about it,'' says Florida Crystals spokesman Gaston Cantens.

FPL spokesman Mayco Villafaña says if the utility paid the biomass producers more, its customers would have to pay more. ``In Florida, the rules are written to protect customers by ensuring that utilities don't overpay for the electricity they buy. Eliminating those rules would allow biomass producers to charge whatever they wanted with no protections for customers.''

''The system isn't fair,'' says Joseph Treshler of Covanta Energy, which runs a waste-to-electricity plant in Hillsborough County. ''The Legislature gives the utility full-cost recovery for constructing a renewable plant,'' meaning the utility has no risk and gets all the profit. ``There is no incentive for them to look outside. They squeeze the independent.''

GARBAGE IN

POWER OUT

With power produced by municipal solid waste, the primary motive of local governments is to get rid of local garbage and trash without creating more landfills.

The problem with burning garbage for electricity is that, well, it's garbage -- meaning it lacks the consistency of a regular fuel. One day's garbage might be filled with power, the next day's might be weak.

''It's not a particularly cheap way of making electricity,'' says Lave at Carnegie Mellon.

The Navigant study reports that garbage power and farm waste (think pig manure) can be twice as expensive as some other forms of biomass. One scenario shows the price needed to justify using garbage power in 2009 will be 12.58 cents/kWh, rising to 15.66 in 2020, making it considerably more expensive than natural gas.

Broward has two garbage-to-electricity plants, managed by Wheelebrator Technologies, a division of Waste Management. Operating since 1991, the plants produce 134 megawatts of power, enough to serve 75,000 homes, save 2.8 million barrels of oil and get rid of up to 4,500 tons of waste a day that would otherwise fill up dumps.

In the Doral area of Miami-Dade, the Resource Recovery Facility processes 4,200 tons a day, producing 77 megawatts of power that serve about 50,000 homes.

The Dade plant also converts 400,000 tons annually of yard trash into a carbon-free mulch. The facility then pays to ship most of that to plants like Florida Crystals', because the Dade generators are at capacity just with garbage.

Plant manager Hank Clements says the Miami Dade plant gets 3 to 8 cents/kWh, which cuts the county's garbage disposal costs by $27 million a year. He says the plant has high-tech emission controls that scrub many of the pollutants out before they get into the air.