BSC harnessing power of wind

As the wind picked up, the blades started to hum, akin to a table fan set on oscillate.

Perched at the top of a 45-foot metal pole was a three-blade wind turbine. It was installed Sept. 1 at Bismarck State College, behind the BSC Armory, generating 2.5 kilowatt hours of electricity in its first week.

Representatives from BSC, Montana-Dakota Utilities and the North Dakota Department of Commerce spoke about the purpose of the turbine and the partnership that made it possible at a press conference Sept. 5 near the turbine. While they talked, it was generating between 300 and 400 watts of electricity, and up to 1,200 watts when the wind picked up.

MDU approached BSC about installing the wind turbine. The college received a grant from the department of renewable energy and efficiency in the North Dakota Department of Commerce. The $1,300 grant covered half the cost of the turbine, which was installed by Gr-8 Country Wind Power.

The residential-size turbine isn’t meant to power the whole campus, but it does provide electricity to a maintenance building behind the armory. It is meant as a demonstration project for MDU and an educational tool for BSC students.

The turbine can generate up to 2.4 kilowatts of electricity and accommodate wind speeds up to 60 mph, at which point the turbine stops working.

Burleigh gets energy efficiency funds

Burleigh County was awarded $68,000 in stimulus funds to boost its energy efficiency and reduce waste.

The funds will be used to retrofit the 78-year-old Burleigh County Courthouse and the 55-year-old Provident Office building.

The funds also will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Work is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

County auditor Kevin Glatt stated that, within the last seven years, many steps have been taken to improve the energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption.

Heat pumps, compressors and air handlers, and boilers have been replaced with more energy efficient units.

“The replacement of the electronic ballasts on florescent light fi xtures and replacing incandescent lights will dramatically reduce our energy consumption and cost,” Glatt said.

He added the benefit will be ongoing and the new equipment will pay for itself between three and five years.

Innovation in oil field means more oil, less expense

A new concept coming to North Dakota’s oil fields will make it look like less drilling is going on when actually much more is.

Harold Hamm, owner of Continental Resources and an innovator in tapping a rich new formation beneath the Bakken formation, has a permit to drill a new well using what his company is calling the ECO-Pad concept.

The concept is to drill four wells from one pad with a rig capable of “walking” about 30 feet from one well to the next in eight hours.

Hamm said he expects to drop the price of drilling a well by 10 percent and increase oil production by about the same number. “ECO” relates to less land disturbance because one pad will be leveled instead of four, using the same road system, power lines and product pipeline, he said.

The technique was developed for natural gas, and Hamm said he might be the first to apply it to oil production. “As far as I know, it hasn’t been (done elsewhere),” he said.

Hamm said the wells – two each – will go into both the Bakken and Three Forks-Sanish zones from the same pad.

“With two zones, it set up a need to deal with both zones in one well bore. This is a very compact way of doing it,” Hamm said. He said it also will improve contact with the reservoir, meaning more of the formation is tapped.

Minnesota firm wants to build Mercer plant

HAZEN – A Minnesota company hopes to use Mercer County’s bonding allocation to build a plant that uses bacteria to turn lignite, manure and the leftover liquid from ethanol into natural gas and fertilizer.

Proterra Bioconversion, of St. Paul, Minn., met with the Mercer County Commission Sept. 16, asking to use the county’s entire $5.2 million bonding allocation awarded to the county under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The company wants to build a $6 million plus no-emission plant on an industrial site at the Mercer County Regional Airport near Hazen.

The county received notice of its bonding allocation earlier this summer and, after hearing from Proterra, appointed a committee to come up with a policy for using it, said county auditor Monte Erhardt.

Mark Hodges, company spokesman, said the anaerobic digestionrefi nery process has been around since the ‘80s. It utilizes vertical plates of bacteria inside enclosed silos to break down the feedstock into a form of biomethane and a liquid fertilizer.

He said the company hopes to get the bonds in time to start construction next year.

Hodges said the project would be 100 percent investor funded and the county would only issue the tax-exempt bonds.

Hazen’s economic development director Duke Rosendahl said the project could create between 10 and 20 jobs.

Researchers studying ways to recycle oil water

MINOT (AP) – Researchers are studying ways to recycle millions of gallons of water used in oil drilling.

The study by the Energy and Environmental Research Center is funded by state and federal agencies. It focuses on water used in the process of fracturing rock to extract the oil.

EERC senior research manager Bethany Kurz said truckloads of water – about 800 gallons a load – have to be hauled to fracturing sites.

A typical fracturing job takes as much as 1 million gallons of water.

t and other area communities have been selling water to oil companies and some are looking at Lake Sakakawea water. The cost of acquiring water for fracturing can be as high as $12 a barrel, which is 42 gallons, Kurz said. Researchers are looking at a type of recycling similar to that done in Texas, where companies recover water from fracturing and a mobile unit removes the salt. But early research in North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation has found that only a small percentage of the water used in fracturing is being recovered in the fi rst 10 days,” Kurz said.

“We are seeing anywhere from 10 to 15 percent water recovery over a long period of time,” Kurz said. The quality of the water is poor because it is so salty, she said.

(Energy briefs compiled from stories by The Bismarck Tribune and The Associated Press.)