It may seem a little bit like “Back to the Future,” but the science is nothing new behind an anaerobic digester under construction at Brunswick Landing that will generate power from organic waste for tenants at the former Navy base.

The plant will use bacteria to break down organic waste and use methane and other gases produced by the process to drive equipment that generates electricity.

The anaerobic digester is based on technology that can trace its origins hundreds of years ago to India, according to Dave Weyburn, founder of Brooklyn, New York-based Village Green Ventures LLC, and has increased in sophistication over the years. In Europe, the technology has be perfected and has become part of the normal process for handling organic waste materials.

The digester can take food waste, fats, oils and greases, septic, biosolids from waste water treatment plants and “anything that’s organic in nature that our system can handle and pump,” Weyburn said. It leaves behind a product that retains all the nutrient value of those waste organics giving it energy and agricultural value. That byproduct could be used to grow a biomass that could be used for combined heat and power plants that otherwise would have been using fuel oil or natural gas. 

In the U.S., there are a few hundred farm-based digesters and municipal waste water treatment plant digesters, though not nearly as many as in Europe per capita.

Quasar Energy Group designed the system Village Green Ventures purchased based on a European design, and is managing the project. 

The company works with the people in a community to figure out what series of resources can be brought together to help reduce municipal costs and electrical costs.  

“And it just so happened that anaerobic digestion was the first ripe investment area for us in the Brunswick area,” Weyburn said. 

The entire electrical system at Brunswick Landing was once owned and operated entirely by the Navy, independent of what Central Maine Power Co. was doing outside of the gates beyond supplying power to the grid on the former base. It is a novel and exciting opportunity to be part of a project that can “serve as a cornerstone for what could become a really interesting demonstration over the next five or 10 years,” Weyburn said.

The idea of a clean technology center or renewable energy center at Brunswick Landing, he added, is a real opportunity for Maine to get out in front and demonstrate how in a suburban community that’s got some rural aspects and some urban aspects to it, can meet energy needs in a thoughtful fashion that tries to address all the needs of the various stakeholders, and use it as a model elsewhere in the country. 

Village Green Ventures is currently leasing four acres from Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority and will operate within approximately 100 square feet on the site. 

The plant will produce as much as 1 megawatt of power or 1,000 kilowatts an hour. That means it should be able to currently meet about half of the demand during the day and about 80 percent of the demand at night, according to Weyburn. 

The peak energy demand will grow as more industry comes to Brunswick Landing, but Village Green Ventures plans to undertake projects beyond the digester to grow generation capacity there.

“We’d like to invest in other distributed generation technology that would allow us to produce all of the power that Brunswick Landing would be able to take from us,” he said. “And that’s sort of a trend in the utility industry right now.”

Weyburn said local energy projects such as the digester helps keep electrical rates lower by avoiding the need to pay for additional transmission and distribution infrastructure.

While Village Green has a preference toward renewable energy, “the fact of the matter is we’re more about putting power where consumers are and trying to create local jobs that keep more of the earnings in the communities that we’re working in,” Weyburn said. A much larger power plant will provide a lot of jobs, “but it’s off somewhere far in the distance, whereas if you have power being generated 1 megawatt at a time or 5 megawatts or even 10 megawatts at a time in your communities, then you’re creating jobs and you’re able to make more of a local impact.” 

This is Village Green Venture’s first anaerobic digester project, and has taken five years to get off the ground. With lessons learned, Village Green expects future projects to roll out in two to three years. 

The 5,600-square-foot building will house the generator, processing equipment, control room, storage and employee locker rooms and showers and power electronics. The operation will include the 850,000-gallon main digester tank, flanked by a 75,000-gallon tank and a 230,000-gallon tank that will hold the inbound feed stock for several days to let things  properly mix and settle before it goes into the main, 1 million-gallon digester tank. 

“It’s a living, breathing beast,” Weyburn said, which requires tender loving care.

The operation will call for four or five employees — possibly more — and Village Green Ventures looks to grow and do other projects and move closer to 20 employees, but that depends on the success of the venture. 

Village Green Ventures plans to increase its footprint in Brunswick and the Mid-coast. Within a 20 years it would like to get to 100 megawatts of electricity generation in the region. What happens here then can be rolled out in other communities.

Weyburn said Village Green Ventures will have a community outreach program and is interested in working with Bowdoin College, Brunswick schools and the new campuses on Brunswick Landing to increase community involvement, and welcomes partners. Its vision is that it’s all forms of energy generation that will ultimately help improve the environmental footprint of our energy consumption, “but also be able to maintain the stability and provide the reliability that’s necessary on a local level for the energy infrastructure.”

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