A farm east of Coaldale in southern Alberta will soon produce electricity.
An anaerobic biodigester being built at GrowTEC Farm will use use waste vegetables and other things to produce more electricity than the farm needs.
“Our intent was to try to take the farm right off the grid,” said Chris Perry, GrowTEC Farm president and CEO. “This actually will produce about 3 times the amount of electricity that the farm uses.”
The anaerobic biodigester will use cull potatoes, onions, manure from feedlots and dairies and organic waste that now goes into landfills to fuel an engine that will produce electricity. The electricity will be sold to the Alberta electricity grid. The heat the process generates will also be used.
“We’ll be using the residual heat for both helping supplement heat on the farm,” said Perry, “but there will be extra heat and we’re looking down the road at something like a greenhouse or algae farm, something of that sort that will be able to fully utilize the heat on site or next door.”
The goal of GrowTEC Farm is to reduce farm inputs including water, fuel, electricity and synthetic fertilizers by 20 percent, increase net yields by 20 percent and do it all by the year 2020
The farm also uses drone imagery, which are detailed pictures Isis Geomatics takes of its fields, to manage crops
GrowTEC worked with Tecconnect, a high tech business incubator in Lethbridge in the planning phase.
“They used this as their base of operation during the planning,” said Tecconnect vice president Renae Barlow. “Our role in helping them do that is not only to provide the space but to also help with connecting them with the right funds, the right people, the network of support that they would need to create that proposal and make the connections that they need in the funding community.”
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The Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation of Alberta is providing half of the seven million dollar cost of the biodigester. It estimates the project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 74 thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalency over the next ten years.
GrowTEC Farm is expected to start producing electricity late this summer.
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