Bill Powers has always been ahead of his time.
Twenty years ago, the founder of Badger Mountain Vineyards in Kennewick, Wash., started raising the first organic grapes in Washington's Columbia Valley - long before organic became a buzz word and marketing tool.
"They all thought I was crazy," said Powers, who owns the vineyard and winery with partner Tim DeCook. "Except Dr. (Walter) Clore. He was the only one here who encouraged me."
Two decades later, Powers, 81, still puts an environmentally friendly foot forward to save energy and create a better business model.
He's outfitted his Badger Mountain tasting room, once an old farm shop, with solar panels. The three-kilowatt solar panels will provide most of the energy needed for the tasting room.
Powers doesn't consider himself a trendsetter; he's a farmer who raised apples in the Othello area in the early '50s, when DDT was the pesticide of choice. He sold the apple orchards and moved to Kennewick to grow grapes on the south slope of Badger Mountain in 1982 and knew he wanted to farm without a bunch of chemicals. During a trip to California, he met vineyard owners who were growing organically. He had his answer.
"But I wasn't going to go broke doing it. I figured I'd try it and see if it didn't work out," said Powers, who talks with traces of a warm Southern drawl, acquired from childhood in Oklahoma.
Powers made the organic transition in 1987 and a few years later, Badger Mountain became the first Washington state vineyard to be certified organic.
Powers still works in the vineyards, while his son, Greg Powers, makes the organic and sulfite-free wines. And he still cares about the future of the winery and making it better, which is why he researched the solar panels.
It came down to common sense, he said.
He gets a 30 percent tax credit on the $30,000 he spent on the project, and his energy bills will drop.
And he'll receive a state incentive of 15 cents per kilowatt hour for the life of the panels, which are guaranteed for 20 years.
When the panels make more energy than the 900-square-foot building uses, the power is returned to the grid. Meters connected to a solar inverter on the backside of the building keep track of how much power is being created, how much is being used, and the "net" amount going onto the grid.
"We figure it will take a dozen years before it really starts paying," said Mickey Dunne, the winery's sales manager.
But the smaller system is simply a test plot, Powers added.
"If this works out, we'd like to do one on our production facility," he said.
The production area, where his son makes about 70,000 cases of Powers and Badger Mountain wines each year, as well as 40,000 cases of custom wine, sits behind the tasting room. It uses far more power than the cozy tasting room and would be a much bigger investment.
"We couldn't do it without the tax incentives," Powers said.
Solar isn't the only alternative energy being used at Badger Mountain.
A few years ago, after reading about homegrown biodiesel, Powers began to collect used cooking oil from restaurants and make biodiesel for the tractors.
"We run a route every week and pick up 200 gallons of oil," Dunne said.
Powers said the biodiesel costs him less than the cost of farm diesel.
The winery also recycles all its garbage. It's just the way they do things at Badger Mountain, he said.
High fuel and energy prices and concerns about global warming have created a trend toward more eco-friendly living. Tax incentives in Washington and Oregon have spurred more interest in solar power, said Jonathan Lewis, owner of Seraphim Energy in Goldendale, Wash.
"We are doing a lot more residential panels," said Lewis, who installed Power's panels. "For people who are retiring, it's part of their dream to be more sustainable and more independent from the power company."
Depending on the energy-efficiency of the building the solar panels are added to, they can offset 10 percent to 100 percent of the power bill, he said.
Print
E-Mail
