Methane Digesters Conference

I had the opportunity yesterday to attend the Role of Methane Digesters on Small and Medium Sized Livestock Farms conference yesterday in Stevens Point. I thought the conference was good. I was disappointed in the weather, since that Secretary Nilsestuen was not able to attend. I have heard him a couple times now and he seems like a very informed and progressive leader. Not to mention, you can tell he loves the state.

I would like to take just a couple minutes to highlight a few things.
- Depending on who you talk with, Wisconsin has between 18 and 21 digesters. All of which produce electricity, except for the ones on Baldwin and Emerald Dairy. Actually, we lead the nation in digesters. 2nd - NY and PA with 16 and 4th - CA. We also lead the nation in energy produced from them, more than double what is produced in the second leading state, CA.
- There are about eight digesters in process of being constructed, of which none are northwest of a line from Grant County to Shawano County.
- It seems like a big issue is how much a farmer/producer can get per kwh. At this time, it is around $.05, with Ontario being around double that, and places in Europe being double (if not more) again.
- There was a lot of discussion on complete mix digesters, which is when you can add additional organic matter. Regarding organic matter, liquid cattle manure (25 cubic meters/ton) has the least potential of biogas yield, with baking waste having the highest (657 cubic meters/ton).
- Discussion also went towards what you can do with extra heat, water, etc. Some of which was discussed in the posts about Emerald Dairy. However, there was talk about ideas of cheese and yogurt operations on sight where digesters give them heat and water and those operations give them organic material.
- Bio-methane was talked about alot and that again, Sweden and Germany are the tops at this. Note that California has signed an agreement with Sweden to work with them on bio-methane.
- I ate lunch next to a guy from a company out of Vermont who make digesters and he said that they have pilot projects that are working now with dairies with 80 cows. Personally, that is needed here, due to the fact that 72% of all the herds in Wisconsin are under 200 cows.
- Discussion about community digesters came up. Note, this is happening a lot in Sweden also. I heard that it might be happening soon in Barron County.
- Finally, John Vrieze offered to pay for the plane tickets and hotel expenses for anyone willing to head out to the state of Washington and learn how university students there were able to build a devise that is much more (I am pretty sure this is right) efficient in the production of on-site bio-fuel and help him implement it on his dairies in St. Croix County. Just to let you know, he was serious.