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At its San Juan Bautista processing facility, Taylor Farms, a major local producer of fresh-cut vegetables, salads and fresh foods, is integrating two power generation technologies and battery storage to achieve energy independence.
The company has installed a 6-megawatt (MW) Bloom Energy solid oxide fuel cell system alongside its existing 1.8 MW solar system. Together, these systems provide sufficient energy to meet the facility’s baseline power requirements 24 hours a day. Installation of a battery system, currently underway, will complete the project.
“The transition has been seamless,” said Ricardo Velez, Vice President of Operations for the San Juan facility. “The equipment in the plant itself is functioning and, operationally, we haven’t seen any difference. We are pretty confident in the process.”
Taylor Farms Retail Senior Vice President of Operations Jerrett Stoffel said the project, including a 2 MW battery system currently being installed, is part of an ongoing effort that began in 2012 to make Taylor Farms as sustainable as possible.
“It’s part of our company’s fabric,” he said. “We’ve always had projects focused on power in most of our sites. Typically, they’ve started with solar, and that was no different here.”
In 2022, the solar installation at the San Juan site began, joining seven other Taylor Farms facilities with completed solar projects. The installation included a 2 MW array with 4,500 panels over the employee parking area and a 0.6 MW array with 1,300 panels in the southeast corner of the 55-acre facility, totaling 5,800 panels.
“The solar generates around 15 to 20% of our power,” Stoffel said, “depending on the time of day and the usage. There’s a chance that we could do more and continue with the same rooftop solar system. That’s an option down the road.”
In 2012, Taylor Farms installed its first Bloom Energy fuel cell system at its Salinas facility. According to Project Engineer Colby Genasci, this system uses an electrochemical reaction between water and natural gas to produce electricity with only water and carbon dioxide as byproducts.
Each cell is modular, he said, allowing “expansion out to however many units you need for the size of the system that you’re trying to achieve.”
Though they are interconnected, each cell can be quickly pulled out and replaced if there is an issue. Genasci likened it to replacing a home hot water tank.
Another advantage, according to Stoffel, is that the cells are reliable, consistent and always on and running.
“It’s not an intermittent supply like the solar systems,” he said. “Obviously, when it’s gray or the sun’s not out, we’re not generating much power from that system, so the Bloom fuel cells are providing us with our base coverage.”
The modular nature of the system, Genasci said, also means it is easy to update to new technologies as they become available.
“If the next generation of cells coming out is more efficient,” he said, “like not having to use as much natural gas to power them, then it would be relatively easy to swap the units out. There are also other fuels, like biogas, that could be used down the road.”
For the last three years, according to Genasci, Taylor Farms has been planning the next phase of the project, which will be completed at the beginning of 2026: a 2 MW battery backup system that will ensure the facility will have enough power during times of peak usage. The installation will also include control logics that help manage and work with the entire system.
Genasci said the biggest challenge of this phase of the project was that the ability of the cells to “ramp up and down to meet certain load profiles is relatively slow,” requiring precise calculations to guarantee a system of adequate size.
Each one of the fuel cells has a capacitor system within it,” he said, “to help be that buffer in terms of matching the exact load profile. We have to be able to discharge energy quickly or consume excess energy quickly. It’s kind of our safety net.”
Once the facility is entirely self-sufficient, the batteries will also protect it against loss of power under any unusual circumstances, allowing it to continue to function. Along with backup generations, they allow for a “decent amount of reserved capacity.”
“If we unplug the cord from the grid,” Genasci said, “then we don’t have the reliability of the utility always being there and being on. If we have a blackout scenario with our energy generation, then we’re on our own for power.”
The entire cost of the projects, according to Stoffel, is around $45 million, with an expected payback within five years. Other than ongoing maintenance, future expenses include replacing the batteries, which have about a five- to 10-year lifespan.
“Our needs will be covered for up to 20 years,” Stoffel said. “It’s cleaner and better for the environment, which was our primary goal. It’s a long-term approach—we’re not going anywhere, and we want to be better stewards of resources as a company.”
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