GreenWhey Energy has opened up a $30 million facility to create energy from cheese waste. Located in Turtle Lake, WI, home of several cheese manufacturers, the facility uses two anaerobic digesters to create a biogas from 500,000 gallons of wastewater from these area cheese manufacturers.
Electricity from the plant’s two 2.2-million-gallon digesters will be sold to Xcel Energy. Their two 20-cylinder generators can produce enough electricity for about 3,000 homes. They are exploring innovative uses for both the waste heat and the excess biogas that their digesters produce.
The GreenWhey facility is the only privately owned digester facility in the U.S. to utilize wastewater from multiple food processors, and is the largest operational digester in the world. The facility received a $3.4 million grant through the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation’s clean-energy loan program. Click here to read more.