Animal Waste-to-Energy

“Cow Power”

Dairyland President and CEO Bill Berg talks about "cow power" at the first animal waste plant to be brought online in the Dairyland system.

Dairyland owns three animal waste-to-energy facilities on dairy farms in its service territory. These “cow power” plants use dairy cow manure as the energy source to generate renewable energy. The manure is collected and heated, creating the natural byproduct of methane gas. That biogas is the fuel used to power the generators.

Dairyland’s animal waste-to-energy facilities include:

Five Star Dairy farm near Elk Mound, Wis.
Wild Rose Dairy near La Farge, Wis.
Norswiss Farms near Rice Lake, Wis.

Each anaerobic manure digester facility can generate 775-840 kilowatts of energy, enough to power at least 600 homes. In addition, Dairyland purchases electricity from other farm digesters, powering hundreds more homes with renewable energy.

View the Cow Power brochure (PDF) to learn more about this interesting form of renewable energy.

Waste to Watts Video

Click here to watch Waste to Watts, an eight minute video tour of the Five Star “cow power” facility, with John McWilliams, Dairyland Resource Planner. The video will open in a pop-up window.

Waste to Watts is a Windows Media Video. If you are having problems viewing the video, click here to install Windows Media Player.