Boldt battles tight sight for biomass plant

We Energies – Domtar Biomass-Fueled Cogeneration Facility

Construction crews worked next to an operating paper mill for 2 ½ years to build the state’s largest biomass power plant.

The $269 million plant, which The Boldt Co. built for We Energies and Domtar LLC at the paper company’s mill in Rothschild, uses byproducts from the logging and paper industries to create steam and electricity. The paper mill uses the steam, and the electricity goes to We Energies’ power grid.

But working next to an active mill made for a congested construction site, said Randy Demeuse, project manager for Appleton-based Boldt.

“It was a massive project, and we had a lot of supplies,” he said. “We needed an off-site lay-down area for supplies that we would bring in as needed. There wasn’t a lot of room for storage.”

Brian Manthey, We Energies spokesman, praised the construction team for succeeding despite the tight quarters.

“Boldt met every challenge that came up,” he said, “whether it was working next to a working paper mill or building a power plant of this size that uses biomass.”

Biomass plants are similar in some ways to traditional power plants, but there are some significant differences. For example, a biomass plant has a fuel handling system with a fluidized bed boiler on the boiler’s bottom that keeps re-burning ash particulate, creating lower emissions, Demeuse said.

Given the project’s scope, Demeuse said, advance planning was a priority. Once work started, the construction team simplified project management by breaking it up into different areas so it wouldn’t become too overwhelming.

Thinking ahead helped a lot, Demeuse said, when the construction team had to schedule multiple heavy lifts during the project to get equipment in the right place.

“That took a lot of planning,” Demeuse said, adding that an engineer and crew used a computer model to rehearse lifting an 85-ton auxiliary boiler into place.

Demeuse worked on the planning for the plant for more than a year before construction began and then for the entire length of the construction project, but he said he never got worn out by the work.

“Every day,” he said, “it was something new, and it was an interesting project to be a part of.”

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