California Agribusiness Uses Solar to Irrigate Crop

July 18th, 2009 by Susan Kraemer

Those yummy California lemons, avocados, oranges, pistachios or cherries on your table right now could have been very sustainably grown using solar panels.

That’s because a giant California grower has just installed 1 MW of solar power to water their 7,000 acre farm. The 6,400 solar panels power pumps to bring water up from deep wells for irrigation.

(Normally these irrigation pumps are run by fossil fuels – one of the reasons that our food is so unsustainable.)

The huge solar system is owned and maintained by a third-party company - as are many commercial solar systems in California. This particular company; Perpetual Power in San Francisco sells Limoneira their own farm electricity at $0.08/kWh, more than 30% off California’s average retail electric rate of $0.12/kWh.

Thus the solar arrays are not only good for the environment, but they save the company $200,000 annually by lowering its cost of electricity below the cost of utility electricity Third party solar can thus be a very cost effective way to get solar power, and large arrays are much more cost effective than small ones.

Mitsubishi supplied the solar system with single-axis trackers following the sun’s path through the day to maximise power output by 15%. It complements the farm’s existing 1 MW solar orchard installed in October 2008, now supplying the company with a total of 2 MW of solar power. The new 1 MW solar system will produce 2,300,000 kWh of electricity annually from California sunshine.

“We believe that sustainable business practices are the key to a healthy future and we’re proud to add another megawatt of solar power to our property in Santa Paula, Calif.,” said Harold Edwards, Limoneira’s president and CEO. “We’ve found that doing the right thing often yields positive financial results in the long run as well.”

Of course, relying on pumped aquifer water in an increasingly drought prone world has it’s own problems.

Image from Flikr user Maantas

Via Solar Daily

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Tags: Limoneira, Perpetual power, PPA, solar cheaper than utility, solar water pump

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

Uncle B

Sad tale . . . aquafirs pumped dry by rabid corporatism and ROI demand before Mother Nature can refill them! Sadder even still, the use of foreign oil to do the pumping – putting the American food supplies, dependent on Arabs, OPEC parasites, at risk, and on the very edge of survivability! Now, salted fields for ROI, a treasonous travesty of the womb of America, against all good farming knowledge, the world over! Now, Solar pumps gently pulling at deep aquafirs, but next, pipelines of sea water, distilled by sunlight to grow crops, priced for the Uber Rich of America only! and finally a sustainable scheme! but how many of the Great Hulking North American Neanderthals must die of starvation before this is a reality? We need a “Manhattan Project” style water development for these vital farmlands and Obama appeases the War-Lords and Oil Barons in Afghanistan for Halliburton(Dubai)’s pipeline through Afghanistan to Turkmenistan and the oil fields there, instead of spending the money – or credit, he has no money! here at home on things Americans need desperately – like jobs! Jobs building Electric Bullet Trains intercity, and the reactors to power them! The Solar installations needed to take the jet-planes and their foreign oil supplies out of the skies! Get rid of the foreign oil thirsty long haul transport trucks, replaced by 400% more efficient rail freight on a computerized faster system? We elected the black bastard, now he turncoats on us and plays “Uncle Tom” to big business, the Military? WTF? him and that black pig Tiger Woods, that golfs for us? Always after white tail? No Black Beauties WTF? Time for Texas to separate from the Union – long live the South and southern lynch parties! Get out the Confederate flags and stand tall, paleskins!
Uncle B

Sad tale . . . aquafirs pumped dry by rabid corporatism and ROI demand before Mother Nature can refill them! Sadder even still, the use of foreign oil to do the pumping – putting the American food supplies, dependent on Arabs, OPEC parasites, at risk, and on the very edge of survivability! Now, salted fields for ROI, a treasonous travesty of the womb of America, against all good farming knowledge, the world over! Now, Solar pumps gently pulling at deep aquafirs, but next, pipelines of sea water, distilled by sunlight to grow crops, priced for the Uber Rich of America only! and finally a sustainable scheme! but how many of the Great Hulking North American Neanderthals must die of starvation before this is a reality? We need a “Manhattan Project” style water development for these vital farmlands and Obama appeases the War-Lords and Oil Barons in Afghanistan for Halliburton(Dubai)’s pipeline through Afghanistan to Turkmenistan and the oil fields there, instead of spending the money – or credit, he has no money! here at home on things Americans need desperately – like jobs! Jobs building Electric Bullet Trains intercity, and the reactors to power them! The Solar installations needed to take the jet-planes and their foreign oil supplies out of the skies! Get rid of the foreign oil thirsty long haul transport trucks, replaced by 400% more efficient rail freight on a computerized faster system? We elected the black bastard, now he turncoats on us and plays “Uncle Tom” to big business, the Military? WTF? him and that black pig Tiger Woods, that golfs for us? Always after white tail? No Black Beauties WTF? Time for Texas to separate from the Union – long live the South and southern lynch parties! Get out the Confederate flags and stand tall, paleskins!
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chrisp

So what happens when the wells run dry? We will then ship the produce from even farther away.
chrisp

So what happens when the wells run dry? We will then ship the produce from even farther away.