KINGS CITY, CA - Rio Farms, LLC by Gills Onions has completed a large step in a key sustainability initiative gripping the industry. The company has completed a massive solar installation equivalent to powering more than 100 homes.
“Investing in solar is really an investment in our company and community,” David Gill, Partner at Rio Farms and Co-Founder of Gills Onions, commented, according to a press release. “We’re effectively locking in our electricity prices for the next few decades while simultaneously reducing our impact on the environment.”
The project was completed by Merced, California-based Cenergy Power, who installed the 1MW DC ground-mount photovoltaic. The company said that the system is expected to provide 1,761,508 kilowatt hours of solar power annually, offsetting about 86 percent of electricity used within 11 aggregated meters.
With the power to fuel 111 U.S. homes annually, it is a long-term investment that Rio Farms’ Partner thinks should continue to spread throughout the industry.
“Being able to independently produce power for our own use on our own land is a value I think a lot of farmers can and should embrace,” Gill concluded.
Rio Farms Director of Environmental Science, Jocelyn Bridson, commented on the multitude of benefits this addition to the company’s resources and tech will bring.
“The combination of continued tax credits and the CPUC’s Net Energy Metering aggregation program made it a good time to go solar,” Bridson said. “Meter aggregation is important as it makes it possible for farmers to put up one array and allocate it to many meters, reducing the need for many small arrays and interconnections which would both cost more and take up too much farmland.”
And when it comes to the company’s having chosen Cenergy, Bridson added that it came down to experience within the industry. “We wanted to work with Cenergy as the company has experience working with other large growers in the Central Valley.”
AndNowUKnow will continue to report as more and more growers look to incorporate cutting-edge technologies in a rising trend to be more sustainable.
