Enrollment options
Customers may choose to enroll 25%, 50%, or all of their electricity purchases in the Cow Power program, which adds a 4-cent premium per kWh. Customers using 500 kWh per month who buy 25% of their electricity under the rider pay only an additional $5 a month. At 50% Cow Power, those customers would pay an additional $10. Farmers receive 95% of the hourly market price for the energy they generate, plus the 4-cent premium paid by tariff customers for the value-added attributes of Cow Power.
Customers enroll for a variety of reasons. Some want to reduce their reliance on nonrenewable energy, so providing them with a renewable energy choice is important. Others want to support Vermont agriculture or reduce environmental impacts.
Diversified benefits
Regardless of the reasons customers enroll, Cow Power provides several benefits to participating farmer-generators. Chief among them is a new, steady income stream that offsets fluctuations in milk prices. Farmers also benefit by using excess heat from the engine-generator to heat water and provide space heating, thereby saving $10,000 to $15,000 annually in offset fuel purchases.
Anaerobic digesters also solve another problem: manure management. Manure can be processed through a mechanical separator, and then the solids can be dried and used to replace sawdust or sand as bedding for the animals, because pathogens are killed during digestion. That use alone saves $80,000 to $150,000 annually for participating farms. Any solids not used for bedding may be further processed and sold to the public or garden centers as a soil amendment or garden compost, providing an additional revenue stream. Taken together, these are enormous benefits in a state with a major farm economy (Figure 3).
3. Recycling solids. Earl Audet (left) and David Dunn examine some of the dry solids left over from the manure digestion process at Blue Spruce Farm. The solids, which resemble peat moss, are used as bedding for the cows, saving over $100,000 annually on sawdust. Courtesy: CVPS
Cow Power even improves air quality. The digestion process removes the odor normally associated with spreading the liquid portion of manure on crop fields as fertilizer. That reduces the impact on aquatic organisms should an accidental manure spill or unintended runoff into a body of water occur. Neighbors within smelling distance appreciate the use of the naturally odorless liquid manure.
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