Aemetis, Inc announced that its subsidiary Aemetis Advanced Fuels Keyes, Inc. has received two grants for a combined total of USD $14M from the California Energy Commission to implement upgrades that would reduce natural gas use, lower greenhouse gas emissions, decrease operating costs and reduce the carbon intensity (CI) of fuel-grade ethanol produced at the Keyes plant.
Aemetis plans to install a 1.56-megawatt photovoltaic micro-grid solar array with integrated battery energy storage and an AI-driven power distribution control system, which is expected to significantly reduce the natural gas currently used in generating on-site electricity. In addition, Aemetis plans to upgrade the facility’s evaporation and distillation units with a mechanical vapor recovery system (MVR) to further reduce the use of natural gas, lowering CI and increasing expected plant production capacity by approximately 25%.
The new AI-driven distribution control system is expected to improve operational efficiency, assist data collection and analysis, and support employee training.