Chapter 449 - 205: Inspection

Chapter 449: Chapter 205: Inspection

Shanmei.

Hai Feng County, Gongping Town.

Several official cars, emblazoned with the words "Southern Power Group," came to a stop in a small mountain village in western Gongping Town.

"Manager Song, the GPS says we should be close," the driver said after parking.

The secretary checked the GPS navigation. "Old Zheng, go forward another three hundred meters or so. There’s a turn up ahead."

"Alright."

The cars started moving again.

A few minutes later, they rounded a bend, and the view, previously obstructed by the mountain, suddenly opened up.

Within a small valley, the flatlands and small hills on both sides of the road had been transformed into a dairy farm.

As far as the eye could see, the farm’s cattle sheds, various support facilities, and artificial pastures for the cows seemed to stretch on endlessly.

The mountainsides had also been converted into four-tiered terraces planted with genetically modified silk-floss trees. Beneath the trees grew lush Purple Alfalfa.

The three cars slowed to a stop.

A sign by the road read: Gongping Town Dairy Farming Base, Gongping Town Biofuel Experimental Base.

Following the signs, the group drove for another kilometer or so before they spotted rows of buildings next to the cattle sheds. They knew they had arrived when they saw one building with a large, red sign on its roof that read "Gongping Town Biofuel Experimental Base."

At the entrance, they explained their purpose to the security guard.

A short while later, Lin Shuya came out with the head of the experimental base, Zhang Guangyu.

"Hello, I’m Lin Shuya, Technology Manager of Hailufeng Company’s Science and Technology Division."

"Hello, I’m Wang Shanhe, General Manager of Southern Power Group’s Lingnan Branch. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Professor Lin." Wang Shanhe had clearly done his homework before coming. He knew that the woman before him, Lin Shuya, was Jiang Miao’s wife, a scientist in the field of microbiology, and also a visiting professor at Lion Mountain Agricultural University.

Lin Shuya responded graciously, "I’m aware of the reason for your visit, Manager Wang. I happen to have some free time recently, so I’ll personally introduce the technology to you all."

"Then we’ll be in your hands, Professor Lin." Wang Shanhe then remembered something. He turned and pulled another middle-aged man forward. "Professor Lin, this is Dr. Ma Zhiyao, an honorary consultant for our company. Dr. Ma specializes in biogas power generation and has some knowledge of microbial power generation technology as well."

"Hello, Professor Lin."

"Hello, Dr. Ma."

After the introductions, the group proceeded inside the base.

The head of the base, Zhang Guangyu, began to explain the facility’s situation. He pointed to a building with a sign that read "Power Generation Building" and said:

"Everyone, this is our company’s currently operational microbial fuel cell power generation unit—the Xianjie-1."

Dr. Ma pushed up his glasses. "Professor Lin, I read the paper you published a while ago. Is this Xianjie-1 developed based on that mutated strain of Owen’s Bacteria?"

"That’s right," Lin Shuya said with a slight smile.

The two of them exchanged a few academic pleasantries.

Wang Shanhe, who felt like he was listening to a foreign language, quickly found an opportunity to interrupt their technical discussion. He said with a chuckle:

"Professor Lin, why don’t we go inside and see how the equipment operates?"

Lin Shuya immediately understood, realizing that Wang Shanhe and the others couldn’t quite follow the technical jargon. She nodded quickly. "Of course. Director Zhang, please lead the way."

"This way, everyone," Zhang Guangyu said, leading them forward.

The few technicians, led by Dr. Ma, had no choice but to go with the flow and follow them inside.

When they reached the entrance of the Power Generation Building, there was a faint smell of cow dung, but no one commented on it.

After passing through a sterilization corridor and putting on protective suits, the group entered the Power Generation Building. However, they didn’t go directly into the power generation rooms, which needed to be sealed off, but went to the control center on the top floor instead.

Inside the control center, three on-duty staff members were watching their computer screens.

Seeing Zhang Guangyu and the others enter, they quickly stood up, a hint of nervousness on their faces.

Zhang Guangyu waved his hand. "Return to your posts. I’m showing General Manager Lin around."

"Yes, sir." The staff breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

Looking at the monitoring screens and the backend data from the various power regulation devices, Wang Shanhe could understand some of it. He pointed to a piece of equipment he recognized and asked:

"Director Zhang, is the daily power generation capacity of this base 350 kilowatts?"

Zhang Guangyu also smiled and nodded. "Yes. Our plant currently has 500 microbial fuel cell boxes in operation, with a maximum power output of 175 kilowatts."

Wang Shanhe continued to ask, "Five hundred boxes? How big are these microbial fuel cell boxes? And what’s the cost?"

"The inner tank is one cubic meter. With the outer casing, it’s a little larger. The cost is about 2,000 yuan per box." Zhang Guangyu wasn’t being entirely truthful; the actual material cost for a whole box was only about 850 yuan.

But since he was talking to a potential client, he certainly wasn’t going to tell them the cost was 850 yuan.

Of course, Wang Shanhe didn’t believe a box was actually worth 2,000 yuan either, but he didn’t call him out on it. Instead, he chuckled and continued, "I heard that the microbial fuel cell chambers use cow dung and straw. Can you use things like pig manure as well?"

"Yes. Animal waste and plant matter can both be used as raw materials for the electrolyte."

Meanwhile, Dr. Ma, Lin Shuya, and the others off to the side continued their technical discussion.

The two groups each talked about their own interests, and for a moment, they didn’t interfere with each other at all.

However, after inspecting the facility for over two hours, Wang Shanhe gave no indication of his intentions. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see the benefits and advantages of the technology. Rather, as he was from a state-owned enterprise, a collaboration of this nature wasn’t something he, a mere general manager of the Lingnan Branch, could decide on his own. It had to be reported to the head office.

He simply asked Dr. Ma to stay behind with his team to continue gathering information, while he himself would take the rest of his people back to headquarters to report the situation to upper management.

Even Lin Shuya, who had little experience managing a company, understood the internal workings of a state-owned enterprise and naturally didn’t press him for any commitments.

In any case, whether or not Southern Power Group decided to adopt this technology was of little consequence to Hailufeng Company.

The core application for microbial fuel cell technology was actually large-scale livestock farms—especially for pigs, cattle, and sheep, which are veritable manure-producing machines, generating enormous amounts of waste daily. This waste, in turn, contains a high concentration of organic matter and various nutrients.

Of course, companies with large agricultural farms could also consider using straw as a raw material.

By using microbial fuel cells, they could achieve power self-sufficiency, stably sell electricity back to the grid, or even build and operate paid charging stations.

As for smaller farms and ranches, they were less suited for building their own independent microbial fuel cell power stations, as the system requires a stable and massive supply of fuel.

If there wasn’t enough straw and livestock manure, they couldn’t achieve economies of scale, which would drive up the cost of generation and make it unprofitable.

Under ideal conditions, the minimum scale for a microbial fuel cell power station should be over 10,000 boxes to bring the cost down to around 0.15 yuan per kilowatt-hour.

Otherwise, you’d end up with a situation like the one at the Yangcheng warehouse center. After factoring in labor costs, their cost reached a high of 0.47 yuan per kWh. This price was acceptable for their own use, but the power grid would never buy electricity at such a high price.

However, the power system had been undergoing market reforms in recent years. If a power generation company obtained a license to sell electricity, it could sell power directly to commercial and industrial users through an electricity trading platform.

But this system still had many operational problems. The most critical one was the insurmountable gap between the power generation companies wanting to sell electricity and the users wanting to buy it: the power grid.

The point of conflict lay in the different generation characteristics of new energy, traditional thermal power, and traditional hydropower companies.

Solar and wind power companies have low costs but high volatility.

Hydropower companies have low costs and relatively low volatility.

Thermal and nuclear power have high regional costs but the lowest volatility.

If everyone rushed to sell power on the grid at once, the price of solar and wind would naturally be the lowest. The problem is, regulating solar and wind power requires coordination with hydropower and thermal power, which easily leads to conflicts.

’If you want me to regulate the power load, you have to subsidize me. Otherwise, who would be willing to take on such a loss-making business?’

Burning oneself to warm others—that’s a characteristic of candles, not power plants.

Thermal power plants aren’t charities, after all.

This was the dilemma currently facing the electricity trading platform.

Unless every power generation company could build its own independent grid, this conflict would be an incredibly difficult problem to solve.

And the idea of every company building its own independent grid was a fanciful pipe dream.

The construction, operation, and maintenance costs of a power grid were far beyond what an ordinary company could bear.

Currently, for many solar and wind power companies, the grid only gave them a connection quota equivalent to 30% of their generation capacity. This was because the grid simply couldn’t handle that much unstable electricity.

What was even more critical was that the scale of domestic wind and solar power construction was growing ever larger, making the grid increasingly difficult to regulate.

Right now, the only solution was the large-scale development of the energy storage industry—things like pumped-storage hydroelectricity, large-scale battery storage stations, and using electric vehicle batteries for storage—which could barely absorb a fraction of the excess solar and wind power.

This was also why Jiang Miao hadn’t rushed Hailufeng Company into partnering with the power grid. The main reason was that the grid was continuously tightening its review process for new energy grid-connection quotas and wouldn’t easily approve an unstable power source for grid access.

Although Hailufeng Company’s microbial fuel cell technology had a highly controllable power output, its relatively small scale was also a problem.

But Jiang Miao wasn’t fixated on connecting to the grid. His target clients were those large-scale livestock enterprises.

Less than three days after the inspection team from Southern Power Group left, another company that had previously worked closely with Hailufeng Company came calling.