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First Posted: 6/15/2009
LEHMAN TWP. – From building-insulation to energy-creation products, strategies to reduce energy bills lured several hundred people to the Luzerne County Fairgrounds over the weekend for the NEPA Energy Solutions Expo.
Stephanie Paluda talks with Lee Rinehart about natural gas and drilling in Pennsylvania at the energy expo in Dallas.
Aimee Dilger / The Times Leader
The show, organized by the Pocono Northeast Resource Conservation & Development Council, displayed potential profit possibilities for farms and offered information from vendors on various products to produce or save energy. It also featured talks from experts on a handful of topics, including in-depth looks at alternative-energy technologies and how to get money to install them.
“There’s a lot of financial opportunities for homeowners and businesses to look into energy efficiency,” said Ryan Koch, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service who works with the council.
Most of the grant money is available for businesses, however, which means residential projects must be paid for up front before rebates of tax incentives are received, he said.
“It could be potentially difficult for an individual homeowner to receive a grant, but depending on how it’s packaged, it is possible,” he said.
The council can help identify grants, pool potential recipients and tailor applications, he noted, and a state program called Keystone HELP provides financing advice and loans for various projects.
Even municipalities can get free services through the state’s Consortium for Scientific Assistance to Watersheds, which provides engineering and consulting for water-management issues.
However, one of the most promising projects on display at the expo is meant for farmers. In 2005, the council received a grant to build a machine to create burnable pellets from switchgrass. It turned to Buskirk Engineering , of Indiana, for a system to shred the material, turn it into pellets and convey it to storage containers.
A mobile, $135,000 system was on display at the expo, and, for $7,000, the company also offers the pelletizing part of the system that can operate using a power connection to a tractor. The machine was turned on for a few minutes and spit out some pellets, but it’s not yet fully operational.
“This machine is very much one of a kind in the world at this point, that any of us are aware of,” Koch said. “And this is its debut, so it needs some tweaking.”
However, it should be ready by the fall, when it will be needed to supply the Benton Area School District with pellets for its new biomass fuel system.
While the council was seeking a grant for the machine in 2005, Koch and several coworkers approached the district about using the state’s Fuels for Schools program to fund the biomass system. Though the school was initially hesitant since the pelletizer didn’t exist, the district’s business manager, who is the mother of Koch’s coworker, was instrumental in getting the program passed.
Now, the council, which owns the machine, has inked a contract with the district to provide two years’ worth of fuel pellets.
Koch hopes the success of the machine will inspire local farmers to find supplementary sources of income from their land through energy production.
“They can essentially grow, harvest and utilize their own fuel on the farm,” he said. “They can essentially be self-sufficient.”
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leader.com