1500-acre Lancaster Co. dairy farm runs on 'cow juice'

Centre Daily Times ^ | Apr. 26, 2008 | Michael Yoder

[thackney]

You both are using residential rates for electricity.

Power Plants don’t get paid residential billing rates.

Residential rates include the cost of thousands of miles of transmission and distribution line, substations, local transfromers and meters, billing departments and line maintenance.

Power plants are only part of that rate. There are lots of expenses when you are the whole utility system.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat8p3.html

[thackney]

Under Net Metering Policy Pennsylvania has to basically run your electric meter backwards or another meter forward to pay you for electricity you generate thus essentially paying retail rates to the generating cutomer.

If you are residential sized this is true. But if you are a small power plant, this law does not apply or people would be building Natural Gas Turbine generators all over the state.

[count-your-change]

True, but as I added there is not enough detail in the article and each application would have its own set of calculations.
And as I further added using a digester might make be a good idea just from the stand point of getting rid of waste even if it were a break-even operation.
But whether it is or not large producers of waste like dairy farms are going to continue to face restrictions on odors and how much manure can be dumped on fields so I expect that if I were a dairy farmer I would get all the grants and low interest loans I could while they are available to finance the inevitable.
Taking the bull by the horns in order to take the cow by the udder as it were.

[Prophet in the wilderness]

lol.. thank you for the correction, I was just guessing.