Mushrooms are not known as a sun loving crop generally. However, nearly 5,000 solar panels have been installed at the US's oldest mushroom farm.
Marlboro Mushrooms, has added a 1.13 megawatt (MW) solar array to help offset energy costs. North Carolina-based Southern Energy Management (SEM) installed the SunPower solar photovoltaic (PV) system.
According to Marlboro Mushrooms' Tom Brosius, "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. 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 electricity needs."
Spread across nearly 7 acres, the installation deploys SunPower's T0 tracking system, which uses global positioning system (GPS) technology to ensure that all 4,953 of the SunPower 228-watt modules are always tracking the Sun.
Source: www.solarnovus.com
