Turning regrowth to power at Cobar

The exciting bid to make use of timber from clearing in the Western Division, rather than letting it go to waste, is slowly becoming a reality.

Project co-ordinator Rob Chambers, “Osterley Downs”, said the plan to use bio-mass as a generational source for electricity was slowly coming to fruition. A prototype plant was under construction in Newcastle, and a site south of Cobar had been selected for trials.

The idea is to use timber such as wilga, turpentine and some gums all mixed in and ground up, rather than chipped, as the source for the new electricity generation. Having the timber as a mix was important to the calorific intensity of the bio-mass.

The idea is that the plant could be used an off-grid energy source for a mine. It would be a 5megawatt  plant run on four tonnes an hour of biomass, “with the potential to run for 900 years”, Mr Chambers said.

He said the idea was possible because of vegetation clearing changes and the fact the Environment Protection Authority would allow use of the legally cleared native vegetation for such a generation process.

The major hitch would be EPA approval  for the actual plant. A by-product would be bio-char. An industrial chemist was involved in putting the plant together run on Syngas motors.

The idea was put together six years ago, Mr Chambers said. (the Chambers run Dorpers about 60km south of Cobar). “The scrub you can chain has very high calorific value,” he said.

“It’s a massive resource here and everyone agrees we shouldn’t let it go to waste.” He said it was hard to get corporates to take on the idea, especially with them paying so little for electricity at about 12 cents a kilowatt.

“But we want to throw some new technologies at them.” The plant was under construction and he hoped to have the trial underway by next autumn. The location of the plant would be kept secret. It would also be located well south of Cobar. The idea was to provide power to stand-alone mines.

The NSW Government backed the concept five years ago as a sensible way to use a forest resource that would otherwise go to waste.

Mr Chambers runs South African bred sheep including dorpers, which he says has added invaluably to the Cobar economy. 

“The beauty of the Dorper for us is that we’re in pretty tough, hard country and we’ve finally found something that wants to live here,” Mr Dorper told Fairfax Media last year. A major cost each year is pests, but the introduction of a Westonfence electric fence had helped preserve native pastures.