27,000 Solar Panels for Leading Vegetable Production Company

June 9th, 2010 by Zachary Shahan

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Seabrook Farms has signed a 15-year agreement to have over 21 acres of solar panel systems installed and maintained on its facility in southern New Jersey.

With each solar panel producing about 230 watts of electricity, the project will generate approximately 6.1MW of energy annually. That would be about enough to supply 785 homes with electricity each year.

Wes Seabrook, vice president of engineering for Seabrook Farms, was outright in saying that the company made this decision largely for economic reasons: “We did it for energy savings and cost reduction.” Seabrook Farms will save about $300,000 a year as a result of the installation. You may not think of New Jersey as a solar hotspot, but it actually has some of the best financial incentives in the nation for going solar.

Seabrook Farms, a “third generation family owned and operated business, specializing in vegetable growth and processing,” signed the agreement with SBS Energy Partners, LLC, which is owned and operated by Energenic.

Essentially, the solar panels will be used to generate electricity for the company’s vegetable processing and freezing. The company freezes about 150 million pounds of vegetables every year.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

via Care2

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Image Credit: SkipSteuart via flickr/CC license

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Tags: Agriculture, Energenic, farming, New Jersey, SBS Energy Partners, Seabrook Farms, vegetable processing, vegetable production, vegetables

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

Bill Woods

According to the linked article, it’ll generate “8.4 million kilowatt hours” annually, or an average of 0.96 MW.

“some of the best financial incentives in the nation for going solar” means the taxpayers of New Jersey are picking up the check for much of the cost. How far can that scale beyond such pilot projects?
Jess

Looking it over better it should say:

6.1MW of energy at capacity.
Jess

Please correct.

“6.1MW of energy annually.”

That should read:

6.1MWH of energy annually.
http://www.localinsuresearch.com Tim Gordon

This is totally great! I still do hope that more and more companies and industries will utilize solar power. I think this will definitely help the environment.