Landfill wells the first step in power project

The Daily Inter Lake

A small methane-powered electricity plant is still on track to begin operating in the late spring at the Flathead County Landfill.

Construction began in November to build a 1.6-megawatt generator that will use methane coming from decaying organic material. Methane is the fuel for the generator.

The Flathead Electric Cooperative is building the plant because of an interest in tackling renewable energy, even though it will generate only a small fraction of the utility's electricity, said Ross Holter, the utility's director of energy services.

The landfill barely produces enough methane to make such a project financially feasible, said Holter and David Prunty, the county's public works director.

The project's target is to extract 400 cubic feet of methane per minute from the landfill. That would be enough to generate 900 kilowatts of power, enough to provide electricity for 900 homes.

Right now, the wells being sunk into the site are extracting about 250 cubic feet of methane per minute. A few extra wells will bump that extraction to 400 cubic feet per minute.

When the weather warms up, assembly will begin on the actual generating equipment and connecting the generator to the methane pipes.