In 1986, long before biomass power plants became “cool,” General Electric started up a 14 MW facility about 30 miles southwest of Tallahassee. It’s still here and in operation, but what a long strange trip it has been.
Timber Energy Resources, as it was called, was sold in 1998 to KTI, Inc., which upgraded the operation and ran it successfully, before selling it. This began a series of ownerships, including Green Hunter Energy, which in February of this year sold it to Multitrade Biomass Holdings.
Multitrade Biomass Holdings consists of this operation, called Multitrade Telogia LLC, as well as a larger biomass power plant in Rabun Gap, Ga., called Multitrade Rabun Gap LLC. The largest investor in Multitrade Biomass Holdings is Leaf Clean Energy Company, based in the United Kingdom, which invests in “clean energy” operations in North America, including biomass, wind, solar and pretty much anything that’s clean energy efficient.
One thread running through much of the history of the Telogia power plant is Ted Hill, who was the lead developer for GE when it built the plant, and has been involved with the plant in some capacity for most of the other companies that bought it.
But after KTI, according to Hill, “The succession of owners that followed were for the large part poorly capitalized, so basically Telogia was left to its own devices economically until Multitrade came along.”
Today Hill is Vice President of operations for Multitrade Biomass Holdings, overseeing the two biomass power plants.
In January 2008 the Telogia plant sustained a catastrophic boiler failure, when a low water condition caused a meltdown of the boiler internals. In 23 degree F temperature, water accumulation had frozen up in the instrument air lines going to the boiler’s feedwater pump, causing it to cavitate, and the boiler to subsequently run out of water.
Only as recently as this past February did the plant start up again, now operated by Multitrade Biomass Holdings (and Clean Leaf Energy), which reportedly paid Green Hunter $4 million for the asset, assumed $1.6 million in invoice obligation, invested $4.6 million in the boiler repair and upgrade program, and did $1.5 million in other repairs and upgrades.