Energy Farms Pay Big Dividends

Family farms simply can't compete with giant farm factories, midwest feed lots, and overseas imports. Even if you operate a farm factory, you still have competition from other farm factories and cheap imports. Often alternate energy can provide more income than tradiitonal farm products and is better than turning your farm into another housing development

Most family farmers are forced to work somewhere else just to make ends meet and to maintain their property. Open land and fallow fields are pretty and replenish ground water; but in an economy where working your farm or leasing out your land won't even pay the taxes, then something has gone terribly wrong.

Alternate energy is a way to help you keep the farm and to turn a profit without working any harder. You already work hard enough! Solar and wind farms can be built to leave land open enough for livestock grazing or hay production. An acre of solar panels creates more energy than any other alternative, including wind, which can be sold directly to the grid, automatically.

Once installed, we suggest you adjust the panel's angle 4 times a year to point directly at the sun to absorb the maximum amount of radiation. Of course, more frequent adjustments are also possible to squeeze out every last kilowatt of power.

Power generation by capturing methane from dung using a variety of methods is also profitable. Anaerobic digesters work well for dairies, feed lots, and poultry operations. Anaerobic bacteria break down the waste and methane gas is collected. Methane can then be used to fuel a microturbine, fuel cell, or internal combustion engine to generate electricity. Methane can also be used to run tractors, trucks, or other farm equipment. Poultry barns are often heated with methane.

Biodiesel made from chicken litter or pig effluence may prove to be a rich source of biodiesel in low temperature gasification chambers. Pyrolitic reactors create a carbon ash which can absorb odor from poultry litter by adsorbing ammonia. Hydrogen makes up 70% of the gas. Specially designed fuel cell stacks can extract electricity from highly acidic fluids such as ammonia rich water, yet this is still in the experimental stage.

Pellets, wood chips, or biomass can also produce energy, of course, and heat energy may be used in a variety of ways, such as steam generators or heaters. Waste wood ships are also used for ethanol and methanol production.

Good solid conservation practices should be the first area of improvement, with implementation of power systems to follow.

Water heaters are the next most cost effective improvement. The proper sized heat storage tanks can collect enough heat in the summer to heat your farm and home all winter long, provide a heat source for regenerative air conditioner, preheat process water, or even provide enough heat for power generation. Waste heat or excess process heat also can easily be reclaimed and utilized.

Farm businesses can deduct up to 50% of investment in alternate energy systems up to $2,500,000.00, spread over 5 years, and take an additional 30% deduction for federal taxes as well. If your business is making a profit, you can write off 80% of the cost.

Going green also means using renewable resources like wood or organic pellets, all of which have a higher BTU content per ton than coal. Often buying locally means supporting local agricultural and alternate forestry products. This creates jobs here in the US, right in your community, reduces your carbon footprint, reduces your energy bill, and helps make this country stronger.

Go Green!

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Unique Opportunities for Farmers


	Take advantage of your barn roofs and install PV panels. You can deduct up to 80% off your tax bill for 5 years! Why wait? You know it's just a matter of time.
PV panels provide more income than livestock, are less risky than crops, and require minimal maintenance. Even marginal land pays a top dollar when you plant power systems.
	Wind power also pays a consistent return, requires little maintenance, and requires much less land than solar panels, leaving fields open for crops and grazing. Sub stations pump power into the grid and are completely self-regulating systems.
Wind promises to pay even bigger dividends as blade technology advances and generators become more efficient, like this new concept that generates 30% more power by using an airfoil.
	Calculating miles per acre of various farm products, solar electric power outperforms all other types of power. Once the field is "planted," your solar field will generate power for decades without replanting or fertillizer.
About 1,000 dairy cows can run a 100 kw generator using this methane extraction process. Hogs, chickens, cows, feed lot animals of all kinds can feed these anerobic methane bags.
	Originally this system was called a "plug Flow Digester" because dung was dumped into one end creating a plug, which held in the methane gas. This is the best biofuel source available.
Today, there are modern variants of this technology which allow efficient utillization of all kinds of animal dung. In some cases, the dung generates more income than selling the animals.
	Methane is siphoned from the digester, dehydrated, compressed, and stored in large tanks like LP gas for use in farm equipment, generators, microturbines, or fuel cells. Make Money Working Smarter!
Methane retains 21 times more heat than CO2, so burning methane reduces global warming 24 times.
	At first glance, this may look like a regular furnace, however this wood burning furnace uses a special process to extract all the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from wood, pellets, or any other burnable material. The gas mixes with air and burns in a separate supercharged combustion chamber at high temperatures. There is little smoke because the VOC's at 3,000 degrees for a nearly complete combustion.
The graph to the right compares the temperature of the burning wood and the smoke as it burns in the secondary combustion chamber. As the wood heats up and releases more smoke, the gas temperature gets much hotter than normally burning wood, about 3,000 degrees F.
	Some model furnaces come with automatic loaders, and are currently available for a wide range of heating situations, with outputs up to 1,000,000 BTUs for commercial applications to replace old inefficient coal, oil, or natural gas boilers.

Farm businesses choosing to invest in distributed power systems save money, increase reliability, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce toxic compounds released by coal fired power plants.