The Heartland Project was developed by AgEnergy USA, LLC. AgEnergy and its members have 28+ years of experience successfully developing, financing and managing the construction of complex energy infrastructure projects.
Heartland sold it’s interest in the AD Project to Edf Renewables (Edf), a subsidiary of Electricity de France, the largest integrated utility in the world. Edf also took over the daily operations of the Project. AgEnergy, through Heartland Renewable Energy retained 20% of the ownership in the Heartland Project through a “Net Profit Interest Structure” and continued to manage construction and start up of the Project.
The Project includes 6, 1.7 MG bio-reactors, Biogas Upgrading System, gas compression and pipeline interconnection to Colorado Interstate Gas company (CIG) pipeline.
Heartland has a contract to sell up to 7,000 dekatherms (Dt) per day of pipeline quality Renewable Natural Gas (RNG). The finished Renewable Natural Gas is compressed and then injected into the CIG pipeline and delivered to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) in California.
Phase I will produce 4,700 Dt/day (28MW equivalent) of RNG beginning the summer of 2016 and Phase II is expected to produce the full 7,000 Dt/day by end of 2017. Current late stage start-up and commissioning gas production is 3,600Dt/day.
Current update: in response to odor complaints and one recorded odor violation (out of more than eight hundred tests conducted by county, state and project consultants), the project owners (Edf) installed several million dollars worth of odor control equipment and modified organics unloading practices. Despite these measures, Weld County claimed that the permit to operate the facility (the Certificate of Designation) was improperly transferred to the new owners and the facility needed to shut down. A fair and balanced description of the current status and the issues leading to the shutdown is memorialized in the Boulder Weekly, CO paper’s article, “A Requiem for a Digester".
