UPDATE The entre plant cost about 9 million dollars to build and after rebates from the government, the entire onion power plant will pay itself off in about 5 years or so. Also, the power isn’t provided by burning the methane gas produced, instead the gas is sent to fuel cells which create heat and water and a very small amount of C)2.
You can smell Gill’s Onions from the time you open the car door in their Oxnard California parking lot, thankfully this assignment didn’t involve cow leftovers…just onions and I am prepared to cry.
As owner Steve Gill tells us,”Making electricity out of an onion amazes me everyday.” At this facility , the largest onion processor in America, making energy out of red, white and yellow onions means peeling off an amazing extra one-point-one million dollars in savings for the company.
Steve explains, “When the onion products arrive at our facility we’re converting it into high value onion products. The waste is being converted into electricity and we have virtually turned this company into a zero waste operation.”
Before building the plant, Gill’s Onions had to dispose of about 300,000 pounds of onion waste a day, but now the disposal is virtually zero because the onion waste is ground into juice and fermented in tanks to create methane gas which then powers their onion processing plant. The little bit of pulp left over is trucked out to California’s central valley and fed to cows.
The big question, while this could mean a fantastic future for many corporations, can it help us at home. Power companies tell us that this type of power plant, which has virtually no pollution of any type, could hold the eventual answer to our energy independence. Gillian Wright from So-Cal gas says “A power plant in your backyard running on Bio-Gas… that’s a little ways off… but having part of your energy – the natural gas that supplies your house, the electricity that comes to your house – being produced by Bio-Gas that’s really close, and this is probably the first step.”
From concept to completion the entire project took about four years to design and complete. As I stand here on a catwalk looking out over the onion powered plant, my eyes have not yet watered and my appetite is no wanting because we are chowing down on a fresh batch of Gill’s Onion wings….thanks to batter sent in from A&W. Can someone please pass the ketchup?
FROM CONCEPT TO COMPLETION THE ENTIRE PROJECT TOOK FOUR YEARS TO COMPLETE,