The Brainerd Public Utilities Commission Tuesday heard from a local business owner about his desire to bring renewable energy sources to his business.
Mike Higgins, owner of the Brainerd Industrial Center, addressed the BPU Commission during public forum. He praised the commission for purchasing the hydro dam adjacent to his business and using it to generate renewable energy for the city.
Since purchasing the former Wausau Paper mill a few years ago, Higgins has marketed the now-Brainerd Industrial Center into a place where a wide variety of commercial or industrial tenants could lease space. He started a company called Midwest Recycling Solutions, with locations in Shakopee and Good Thunder, which focuses on recycling food waste.
This company, combined with other recycling operations located at BIC, has led Higgins to explore renewable energy options for his facility. He has started focusing on solar or wind power options, he said, and asked the BPU Commission if the utility would be interested in partnering with him on a project.
"It's something that I want to get into and do more of," Higgins said.
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The utility continues to look at renewable energy options, secretary/finance director Todd Wicklund said, with a focus on solar power. The feasibility hinges on generation capacity, he said, as it requires 6-7 acres of solar panels to generate a megawatt of electricity.
"That's where you start to get some economy of scale," Wicklund said.
There's 10 acres of roof space at BIC, Higgins said, which could be used to mount solar panels.
In other business, commission President Dolly Matten asked Superintendent Scott Magnuson to speak with Aitkin County administrators about the water flow at the hydro dam. There's an annual concern from the Aitkin area about flows at the hydro dam affecting flooding in Aitkin, she said. The commission discussed this same issue at its April 2016 monthly meeting.
"There's always concerns that if we're not opening up the dam, we're going to flood them out," Matten said.
The upstream impact of the dam extends about 9 miles, Magnuson said, to the Riverton area, which is still in Crow Wing County. Aitkin County is about 45 miles away from the dam, he said.
The Army Corps of Engineers dictates the level dam flows must be at, Magnuson said, and is the only group that can tell the utility to open up the flow gates more. If the utility were to open all the gates at the dam to theoretically relieve Aitkin County, he said, the Little Falls area would flood.
"It's set up and it has been set up for years and years and years, that that's the correct water elevation," Magnuson said.
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In other business, Wicklund provided a report on the utility's operating statistics for 2016. The utility sold 180,334,450 kilowatt-hours of electricity during the year, an increase of 78,199 kWh over 2015.
The water department sold 400,225,513 gallons of water during 2016, a decrease of 2.8 percent from 2015. The annual sales represent the equivalent of about 606 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water.
The wastewater department processed 545,513,283 gallons of wastewater during 2016, an increase of about 4.3 million gallons from 2015. The annual sales represent the equivalent of about 826 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of wastewater.
Commission member Bill Wroolie was absent Tuesday.
