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Manure-Powered Generators On The Rise
Sunkist writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has a report on Marin County rancher Albert Straus that, after 25 years of work, began using a generator powered by manure. While this type of 'power' has been in use for a while, recent legislation has made it more widespread. From the article, 'The Straus Farms' covered-lagoon methane generator, powered by methane billowing off a covered pool of decomposing bovine waste, is expected to save the operation between $5,000 and $6,000 per month in energy costs.' Let's hear it for poop!"
Shit.
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
That's great and all but what does Tina Turner have to say about it?
What could possibly go wrong?
That's greenpeace FUD, really. There's not nearly as much CO2 staying in the atmosphere as there should be, and noone knows why not. The best theories are that the oceans (which are most of the planet) sink orders of magnitude more CO2 than all the land-based plants.
On the panel, an electricity meter began running backward, indicating that power originating from a nearby poop-filled lagoon near the town of Marshall was feeding into PG&E's electric power grid.
A well-fed dairy cow produces 120 pounds of manure every day, or 40,000 pounds per year per animal.
These cows are pooping money!
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Our power company, SRP, does a similar thing with landfills. After the landfill is full, they tarp it and collect the methane in order to generate electricity. Then, a few years later when the methane generation slows down enough they remove the power generation equipment and build a public park on top. Three uses for one piece of land is not a bad idea at all.
cows would no longer be slaughtered, but still they'd still be raised commercially
I see this as more of a way of recycling. Crap is a by-product of an animal using energy. The actual energy needed to produce that crap is immense. Think of the grass that has to grow and the nutrients placed into the soil, then what your body can't use is the crap. When it gets down to it... we would probably save money, and resources just growing tress on that land and burning those(skip the cow). The benefit to the current setup is that we can raise the cow, eat em, and then recycle the by-products.
"With net metering, small producers like Straus can reduce or erase their energy bills but cannot be paid for pumping excess energy into the grid. Net metering has been available to owners of home solar systems for several years."
Why do we allow laws that strip us of potential income, and benefit companies like PG&E?
it really just depends. One, you don't have to use manure, you can use a variety of any biomass that will anerobically digest, which is hmm, all of it. One idea I heard of was from jaque cousteau, his was to use kelp, because of it's incredibly fast growing nature and the make-up of kelp makes it ideal for digesting. It seems industrial hemp would be ideal, too, it's cellulose production per acre/year is amazing, and it doesn't require that much fertiliser, you could get by just plowing under 1/2 the plants every year for that, then re apply the slurry as well. If you could see in meat space how much quite useable burnable gas you get from even a small amount you'd see it's very practical and economic. The deal is, the big energy companies CAN'T send you a bill for it,because you can own it, so no way will this be pushed officially by the government or it's controllers, big industry, that much. They *dig* having you pay forever into their monopoly, both with cash and with mindshare. It's the same with solar, with wind generation, etc.
Second,to get back to some farm savings, although the nitrogen level % remains the same in the manure and water slurry after digestion, it is in a more available form to plants than normal aerobic digestion or composting (farmers just shoot this stuff back on the fields now, with conveyor spreaders or flail spreaders). I have read it is as high as 600% better with anerobic digestion, so you get significant savings on fertilizer (which is a HUGE cost now and going up because artificial fertiliser is made from natural gas), which is what's done with the slurry after it has exhausted methane production potential. And last, it is "relatively" cheap to build these things,and they are incredibly scalable, there's a size and technique to fit any size operation, from joe water buffalo rice farmer on up. There are hundreds of thousands of them around the planet now,of various sizes,just not much in the US, so here it's stayed mostly "experimental",and they have to "study it", etc, that's all, any place else it's just normal, and sunlight is an excellent conversion tool for getting solar energy into various useful products. It's very productive sunlight is,a great energy conversion tool, especially with living plants, and it's the only practical fusion generator we have, and it's "free and open source", the government or industry can't charge you for it directly. They will play act at supporting it, that's about it, it doesn't lend itself to monopoly control, so they spread a lot of economic FUD around it.
Remember, farming has always been profitable and useful,well, from obvious reasons, food is kinda nice, even before modern techniques were invented, so it's quite do-able. Look at giant forests, grow all on their own, no high tech anything needed for them to grow, just water, dirt, sunlight, air, done. They are just huge biological manufacturing plants, quite sophisticated really, and that's all any farm is, a biological factory, and there's various ways to cut costs and remain profitable, ONCE you as joe big farmer STOP being brainwashed by monsanto and the energy companies and the equipment companies and the banks. You have to break that mindset of "dependence" first before you can wrap your brane around "how to do it" better. That first step is just too much for most people to get over. It's not really their fault, it's how they were taught, and what the "approved" techniques are as taught at ag colleges and in industry orgs. There are VERY few independent farmers around, the vast majority are really just coporate sub contractors and have to follow these corporation rules. The guy I work for owns three large farms, he is controlled by his suppliers and marketing org down to an obscene picky little level like you wouldn't believe on how to run his farm, or he can't market, and that's the biggest problems farmers have now, and they get trapped into it, go along, or go broke. Once in and in debt, they are trapped, it's almost like a form of serfdom on a large scale. It's a hard