Subject: Engineers say nix to pigfarmer

From: [email-masked] (Mike E. Romano)
Date: 13 Sep 1993 12:02:46 GMT

from Earth Island Journal Summer 1993 (reprints encourage with
credit given)

After pig farmer Roy Sharp built a lagoon to treat the wastes
from his 16,000 hogs and covered it with a tent to control
odors, he wondered if he could burn the trapped methane
gases to produce electricity.  
Engineers told him it would never be cost effective, since
such a system could not produce more than 26 kilowatts of
electricity per hour.
Sharp built the system anyway.
"We're now getting about 140 kilowatts an hour during the
summer," Sharp told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The pig gas power plant produces enough energy to cover
the farm's monthly $3000 electricity bill.
Meanwhile Sharp receives $300-700 a month from the power
company for the excess electricity he is pumping into
the utility grid.

(do I hear a grunt of approval from the engineers?)
Mike Romano