The Joint Southeast Campus Area Committee was presented with reno-vation plans for the power plant on Charter Street Monday night, in-cluding phasing out coal and utilizing more renew-able fuels.
The new plans involve removing the four coal boilers and replacing them with two that burn natural gas and one that burns renewable fuels such as wood and paper pellets; other plans include designating a small site for preparing and storing renewable fuel sources.
Alan Fish, associate vice chancellor for facilities planning and management at the University of Wisconsin, presented the plans to the committee. He stressed the importance of converting to renewable energy, saying the Charter Street plant could be a model for power plants in other urban areas throughout the country.
Fish also detailed his hope that a large market for renewable fuels will form in Wisconsin after the plant is up and running. He cited a study pointing to the “massive amount” of renewable fuels within 100 miles of Madison and said that amount is expected to increase as the power plant would greatly increase the demand for renewable fuels.
Phasing out coal power is expected to reduce harmful air emissions by 90 to 95 percent in some areas of Madison, according to Fish.
“The whole cycle is much more eco-friendly,” Fish said.
To bring the renewable materials into the city, two new railroad lines will be added to the tracks currently running through the power plant, with an area to store extra trains near the Kohl Center. A building will be placed around the tracks so car unloading will occur indoors, keeping noise and dust to a minimum.
Some committee members expressed concern about the trains being so close to Smith Hall, both because of the annoyance to students living there and because of the risk of vandalism on trains. However, the trains will be out of the area as soon as they are unloaded, according to Fish.
In addition to the power plant, a small test facility will be built to research renewable fuels in hopes of maximizing their effectiveness. There will currently only be room for three to five days worth of fuel on site, so one of the main goals of the testing facility will be increasing the amount of energy that can be produced by each pound of fuel.
Until renewable fuel sources are more space efficient, most of the materials will be stored and sorted on a site outside of the city and shipped into Madison by train.
“This is quite a contribution to the community,” committee member Mary Berryman Agard said.
Groundbreaking on the site is set to begin in May 2010, and coal burning will be completely phased out by the end of that year, Fish said.
After coal burning is phased out, only natural gas will be burned by the plant until July 2013, when the renewable fuel generators are set to be finished and installed.
