California nut growers use sun for power, too
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The ample sunshine that has made California's San Joaquin Valley among the world's best places to grow everything from almonds to zucchini on Wednesday will also become a source of power at a huge nut farm there.
Paramount Farms, which claims the title of the largest supplier of almonds and pistachios to the world, tomorrow will start up a $7.5 million 1.1-megawatt solar farm spread across eight acres.
It'll be the largest solar farm on an agricultural site in the United States, Paramount said.
Over the next year, the Paramount Farms Solar Plant will generate about 15 percent of the electricity used by the Paramount Farms nut processing plant.
Privately held Paramount Farms bases its farming operations in Lost Hills, California. It grows pistachios on about 28,000 acres and almonds on about 40,000 acres, its nuts are sold under the Sunkist and Everybody's Nuts labels as well as to stores that sell under their own label, including Wal-Mart, Costco and Trader Joe's.
Paramount's owner Stewart Resnick wants to be environmentally conscious, said David Szeflin, the vice president of operations for Paramount.
But it's also a sound business deal, said Szeflin, because the money put into the solar farm will be returned to them in the form of cheaper power bills because it won't have to buy as much from its utility, PG&E Corp.'s Pacific Gas & Electric subsidiary, Szeflin said.
Also, Paramount will get state and federal tax credits for developing the solar farm.
The power to be supplied by the solar farm would be enough to serve about 300 homes.
The panels will be amorphous silicon, not the photovoltaic panels popular on house roofs and also many other solar power farms in the United States.
"What's nice about amorphous silicon is it's requires almost no maintenance whatsoever," said Szeflin. "Photovoltaics follow the sun and are more efficient, but we are not constrained by space. We are able to use this material and have no maintenance cost for the next 50 years."
Last year, Paramount had sales of about $500 million, Szeflin said.
The processing plant that takes up 140 acres is located in Lost Hills, about 60 miles from Bakersfield, California, and 100 miles southwest of Fresno.
