Blooming Nursery installs solar thermal project

Grace Dinsdale, founder and president of 130-acre Blooming Nursery in Cornelius, Ore., is installing the state’s largest solar thermal project, reports The Oregonian. The project is not for generating electricity. The solar panels being installed will be used to heat 300,000 gallons of water in a concrete storage tank. The water will be circulated through underground heating pipes in a 54,000-square-foot greenhouse. The well-insulated water tank will retain heat for months. Dinsdale will continue to use natural gas to heat two other larger greenhouses and the fuel will serve as a backup for the solar heated house. Her heating bill has been around $150,000 annually. Dinsdale said she would not have installed the solar project if she had not received a 50 percent tax write-off under the state’s Business Energy Tax Credit program. She expects payback will take five to eight years. Another benefit of the project will be the flexibility it offers Dinsdale in regards to crops that she can produce. She told the paper one possible new crop could be tropicals.