Wood-fuelled plant set for operation

       Thailand's first wood-fired power plant is expected to start operations early next year as part of the government's policy to promote alternative energy sources, said the Energy Policy and Planning Office.
       A Plus Co, wholly owned by the Thammarak Niwet Foundation, will operate the 1.5-megawatt station, said EPPO secretary-general Viraphol Jirapraditkul.
       The wood-fired plant is a pilot project supported by the EPPO and Suranaree University of Technology (SUT).
       There are a number of suitable fastgrowing trees that act as carbon sinks while being farmed that can be used as clean energy sources once harvested.
       There are three fast-growing tree varieties - acacia, acacia mangium and leucaena - that are commercially viable for use in Thailand, a SUT study found.
       A Plus established a 1,000-rai leucaena plantation to supply its plant with fuel.The firms plans to increase the plot size by another 2,000 rai next year.
       The EPPO and the Energy Ministry supported the project yesterday by providing it with one million leucaena trees for the plantation.
       Leucaena is a fast-growing nitrogenfixing tree with many uses that grows well in tropical conditions. It removes nitrogen gas from the air and make its usable for plants and animals.
       A Plus's power plant will be Asia's second wood-fired power plant, following the launch of a similar project in India.
       The cost of producing power at the wood-fired plant is 1.60 baht per kilowatt hour (unit), slightly higher than 1.25 baht per unit at a coal-fired plant.
       Thai energy policymakers hope the fuel-wood plantations would help reduce both greenhouse gases and coal-fired power production, as well as slowing the pace of deforestation.
       "As the government is promoting biomass and biogas, we might succeed in reducing the use of mainstream fuel,but we deforestation has increased as farmers tend to cut down forests to plant trees that can be used as fuel," said Mr Viraphol.
       The EPPO offers an adder rate of 30-50 satang per unit on top of the unit cost of producing power from renewable fuels,which allows power producers to sell such energy to the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand at a higher rate.
       However, the EPPO is considering further increasing the adder rate for fast growing fuel-woods to encourage investment in wood-fired power, said Mr Viraphol.
       "The wood-fired power project not only reduces deforestation but it will not reduce the area used for food crops,"said Energy Minister Wannarat Channukul. Using fast-growing trees for fuel will help Thailand achieve its target for renewable energy to account for 20% of local power production by 2023.
       Policymakers are pushing for the use of fuel-wood due to a severe shortage in other biomass resources, such as rice husks, corn waste and chipped rubber wood, said Weerachai Arjharn, chairman of SUT's Center of Excellence in Biomass.
       The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry plans to plant fuel-wood in deforested areas. It plans to increase the current 37,000 rai of fuel-wood plantations to 50,000 rai in the near future, he said.
       "If we turn deforested areas into fuelwood plantations, we could have 300MW of wood-fired power capacity," he said.
       TPI Polene and Mitr Phol Group have also announced plans to start growing leucaena trees near their production plants so they can use the fuel-wood for future power production.