Gas-to-electricity plant debuts at Irvine’s Bowerman Landfill
LA Times, March 30, 2016. Image credit: Alexas_Fotos
The proverbial link between trash and treasure has evolved into a symbiotic relationship between energy and efficiency with the coming of a renewable-energy power plant to Irvine’s Bowerman Landfill.
[bctt tweet=”The Bowerman Power Project is capturing methane gas from trash and converting it to energy.”]
The Bowerman Power Project went into operation this week, converting methane gas, a byproduct of landfill trash, into enough electricity to power 26,000 homes.
Bowerman’s facility adds 160,000 megawatt-hours annually to the grid. It brings the total annual electricity production at Orange County’s landfills to 380,000 megawatt-hours, enough for 56,000 homes.
Bowerman’s 113,000-square-foot plant occupies 2.6 acres of the 725-acre landfill. It features seven state-of-the-art Caterpillar reciprocating engines that convert compressed and cleaned methane gas into electricity. It was built at a cost of $60 million by developer, owner and operator Bowerman Power, a subsidiary of Pittsburgh-based Montauk Energy. It is Montauk’s largest power project to date, according to a news release.