Intrepid Tech & Resources (fka ITRP)

[Bobwins]

This is the best article I have read about the digesters. It puts quite a few things into perspective.

1. There are only 40 digesters in the whole country
2. Normal digesters that supply gas that is used to generate electricity on site are marginally economic, taking 10 to 20 years to get a payback and require large capital outlays.
3. There are competitors selling digesters
4. IESV claims to reduce payback to 5 to 10 years depending on the alternative use for the gas
5. Farmers aren't going to voluntarily spend the money to build anything.
6. Local government is resistant to forcing the dairies into a mandatory solution. Dairies are pretty big business in Idaho.
7. Low electricity rates from Hydro make it harder for the digesters to pay for themselves in Idaho. Article states they would get about .05 per unit supplied and need .062 to .065 to provide economic reason to build digester. So you need at least 30% increase in revenues to make this work.

This last point is the crucial one. IESV maintains it's digester is unique in a couple of ways. They say their licensed technology provides a quicker digestion period, which fits into the farmers routine better AND the methane gas produced has a higher energy content. Also IESV has been concentrating on higher value added uses for the methane. The combination of higher content gas and higher uses in combination may be able to bridge the 30% gap.

Since IESV hasn't trotted out real life examples of this technology working, I am assuming that it is being used elsewhere to generate electricity but Not to supply alternative higher value uses. Therefore they can't point to a dairy in Europe and say look it works here and has been making money for 10 years.

This article is great but does point out the challenges. The 30% gap may be just to get to breakeven on a single dairy unit. That doesn't allow for IESV to support corporate overhead, pay for sales and engineering and make stockholders rich!!! How much more do we need to make decent money for IESV???? That's the big unanswered question.

Also once you build the infrastructure, what stops a competitor from taking advantage of all the groundwork IESV has done in the Magic Valley and selling a dairy another type of digester. How do they keep the loyalty of the farmers and prevent politicians from requiring them to open up their facilities to all methane producers?

Thanks Dallas for the nice DD. Bobwins