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Cream and yogurt, too. Here's another outfit that was featured on a local PBS (Sacramento's California Heartland) that is doing the same thing, only with pigs in the Central Valley; not as romantic as Marin County.
Pig Power "In pig farming we use everything but the squeal," says David Sharp.And when David Sharp and his father Roy say everything, they mean everything. Thesepig farmers at Royal Farms just outside Tulare in the southern San Joaquin Valley have an interesting and important revenue source. For want of a more precise term, we call itpig droppings.
The little piglets that grow up into 500 pound porkers ultimately end up as gloves and pork chops, even the gelatin in some ice creams. But a quarter ton oinker on the hoof leaves behind an astounding amount of manure. And now that's a cash crop."When I smell it or see it, I think money," said David.
On a sweltering valley day in August the odor from a farmyard of pigs can take the will to live right out of a city person. But to the Sharps, that means the family power plant is hard at work.
The waste material contributed by all those pigs is converted into methane, a colorless,odorless gas that is inexpensive and valuable. The methane can be turned into electricity and the Sharps sell the excess to Southern California Edison. That's right; those big appetite pigs have friends in corporate America, here's how it works.
Said David, "There's basically like a basement underneath these pens where all the waste drops, or the renewable resource as we call it sometimes and it slopes so all we have to do is flush it with water, then gravity takes over and then pumps it into the lagoon."
This so-called lagoon, covered with a tarp, looks and feels like a giant waterbed.
"This is where the gas is produced and underneath me, the bacteria are digesting all the organic matter that's being pumped in here. It's almost like a pot boiling but there's no heat. There's billions and billions of little bugs down there eating and all that gas just gravities to the top, bubbles up and we take it from there," said David.
The methane is pumped out and fuels a generator on the other side of the farm. This low-tech electrical plant has saved the Sharps a ton of cash over the years.Said David, "Since we've started this, we've saved over a million dollars in power costs."
An average of $84,000 per year shaved right off the top of the electric bill. It's a great system as long as everything works.
"Once in a while, it's just like every system has its glitches, and we have to run like a roto-rooter snake through it and unplug it, but it's fixable, easy. It's just not real glamorous. It's why plumbers get paid so much," said David.
Don't look for pig power to soon to replace petroleum of hydroelectric power. But there is a market for methane. Even the Federal Government, no stranger itself to gaseous emissions, is encouraging farmers to install their own methane recovery systems.
www.californiaheartland.org/archive/hl_762/pigpower.htm
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