Maine Woods Pellet Company has awarded a contract to Turboden, a group company of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), for the supply of biomass-based ORC power unit for its plant in Athens, Maine, the US.
Maine Woods Pellet owns and operates a wood pellet production facility, which is capable of producing up to 100,000t of wood pellets per year both for the bulk and bagged fuel markets.
Under the contract, Turboden will provide the 8MW ORC system, which can convert the heat of thermal oil generated by wood residues from de-barking and chipping operations.
A power purchase agreement (PPA) has also been signed between Maine Woods Pellet and Central Maine Power (CPM) covering the power to be exported to the grid and will benefit from a tax credit for the project equity investments as per the New Markets Tax Credit Program.
The biomass power unit is scheduled to enter service in March 2016.