Fresh Venture Foods (FVF), the wholly owned processing and cooling facility to Gold Coast Packing (GCP) and Babe Farms (BF) has recently activated an onsite cogeneration plant to produce a significant portion of their electrical needs.
In October 2011, the owners of GCP and BF decided to form a joint venture and built a 75,000 square foot facility on land they owned in Santa Maria. The facility can be expanded to 105,000 square feet to support future growth. Construction of the new facility was completed in the fall of 2012. The new facility provided 50% additional capacity and houses all corporate office functions as well as production which includes receiving, cooling, cleaning, sorting, packaging and shipping.
In 2015, after an extensive feasibility study FVF decided to install a natural gas fueled cogeneration plant to reduce their carbon footprint, control costs and upgrade their energy infrastructure. The upgrade will help keep rising energy costs under control by replacing grid electricity with on-site power generation. Emissions will be reduced by using the engine waste heat for onsite cooling.
FVF hired CLP Energy, LLC, a California based developer and financier of Cogeneration Systems and Axiom Engineers, a mechanical engineering consulting firm (common ownership) to design and build the plant. CLP provides sales, marketing and project finance services primarily to agricultural customers in the central valley of California. Axiom Engineers and has been providing a wide range of mechanical engineering and consulting services to their customers for over forty years and has offices in Monterey, Napa, San Jose and Santa Cruz.
The engine/generator (genset) was provided by Western Energy Systems which is part of the Penn Power Group, a subsidiary of General Electric. Western Energy is the authorized GE distributor of Jenbacher gas engines in the state of California, Oregon and Hawaii. Jenbacher has manufactured the world’s most efficient gas-only engine generators since 1957. Jenbacher engines can exceed 42% electrical efficiency and 80% overall efficiency when operated as a combined heat and power system.
FVF will be using the Jenbacher J312 engine which has an electrical output of 633 KW. In addition to the containerized generator, the system has a skid mounted chiller and two water towers. A heat recovery system will be used to convert the waste heat into therms which will be used to chill water for various plant processing needs. To aid the plant in meeting new regulatory requirements, the engine is equipped with an advanced carb 1110.2 compliant emissions control system that attains treated emissions of 4 ppm at 15% O2.
The plant became operational in June 2016.
For more information on the Fresh Venture Foods Cogeneration Plant please contact:
Gary Burk, Project Manager
Fresh Venture Foods, LLC
Tel: 805-310-3727
For more information on Cogeneration Plants and their feasibility/application to your specific facility please contact:
Vincent A Cuzzo
CLP Energy, LLC
Tel: 516-445-3771
Source: Gold Coast Packing & Babe Farms