Tuesday, September 08, 2009 at 12:03:42 PM - by Jeanne Roberts

In Vigo County, Indiana, the barn roof on Dr. Harold and Terri Loveall's 200-acre beefalo ranch supports 60 solar photovoltaic panels producing 13.4 kilowatts of electricity, making it the fourth largest residential PV system in the state. The largest, at 20 kilowatts, is in northwest Indiana.

According to Terre Haute-based One Planet Solar & Wind owner Phillip Roberts, whose company installed the dual arrays, it’s also the first step in making the ranch, or farm, energy-independent, providing half the electricity needed not only to run the electrified perimeter fence which keeps the beefalo in, but to operate the 7,000-square-foot residence.

The beefalo, a cross between domestic cattle and the American bison, are valuable animals worth protecting, and the savings the Lovealls expect to accomplish with the solar array – about $9,500 per year over the lifetime of the system (or 25 years) – make potential beefalo profits that much more tasty.

The Lovealls not only generate solar electricity, but on low-use days sell it back to regional electric utility Win Energy, whose “smart” (bi-directional) meter records solar electricity production that the Lovealls don’t use and credits it at retail rates against electricity they buy. With rates already locked in at 11.6 cents per kilowatt hour, the Lovealls are paying for their investment and occasionally even turning a profit. This doesn’t even take into consideration tax incentives under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or state, local and utility incentives and rebates.

The Lovealls already know the value of solar energy. They’ve been using solar panels to produce hot water for almost 30 years, as well as running four solar attic fans and using passive solar from south-facing windows to heat the house in winter. This most recent installation is a response not only to solar prices, which have fallen considerably in the last 25 years, but to solar efficiencies which have risen almost 400 percent over the same period.

More important, the Lovealls are achieving the sort of sustainability, or energy independence, that will allow their business to flourish even when retail electricity rates – driven by rising fuel, transportation, and generation costs, not to mention the potential emission’s costs of the Waxman Markey climate bill moving through Congress – make many forms of food production financially unsustainable.

In fact, without renewable energy generation to provide a cost buffer, many small American farms, facing the rising costs of irrigation, fertilizer and pesticides mandated by global warming, may find themselves out of business, according to David Wolfe, a professor of plant ecology at Cornell University.

Perhaps most important, the Lovealls are preventing the annual release of about 33,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, 150 pounds of sulfur dioxide, and about 85 pounds of nitrogen oxide, all gases that contribute to global warming.

When Phase II of the Loveall’s solar plan (i.e., more solar panels) goes into action in a few years, the farm will become completely energy independent, fulfilling the Loveall’s ambition to develop an “invisible” carbon footprint that will benefit their children and grandchildren.