Nation's Oldest Family Mushroom Farm Goes Solar

February 8, 2012 - SEM has installed a 1.13 MW solar array in Pennsylvania for Marlboro Mushrooms.

WEST GROVE, PA - Mushrooms do not normally need much help from the sun, but nearly 5,000 solar panels have popped up alongside buildings that house white button mushrooms near West Grove, Pennsylvania. Marlboro Mushrooms, the oldest family mushroom farm in the country, has added a 1.13 Megawatt solar array to help offset energy costs. North Carolina-based Southern Energy Management (SEM) installed the SunPower solar PV system.

"Keeping mushroom crops in a controlled environment requires a tremendous amount of electricity to maintain optimal growing conditions, and we thought it was a natural step to use solar power to shoulder some of that load," said Marlboro Mushrooms' Tom Brosius. "It is great to harvest the sun's power and take advantage of a renewable resource. We anticipate it will generate 100% of our annual electric needs."

Spread across nearly seven acres, the installation deploys SunPower's T0 tracking system, which uses GPS technology to ensure all 4,953 of the SunPower 228-watt modules are always tracking the sun.