Taylor Farms has unveiled a $2.1 million array of 3,520 solar panels that will help supply power to the company’s 220,000-square-foot Dallas plant that produces 12 million servings of food a week.

The solar installation is the fourth among the Salinas, California-based company’s 13 facilities across the country, the Dallas Business Journal said. Taylor Farms is a leading maker of salads and healthy foods in the United States.

“If we can get our salad plants off the grid, we’re interested in doing that,” CEO Bruce Taylor told the DBJ. “We’re testing a number of different technologies.”

“If we can get our salad plants off the grid, we’re interested in doing that.”
Taylor Farms CEO Bruce Taylor

The solar panels will supplement traditional power sources at the plant. Roughly 17 percent of the power comes from solar panels, with the remainder coming from tradition sources, the company said.

Taylor said the panels should pay for themselves in about five years, counting tax credits and rebates the company gets from the state and federal governments.

Taylor Farms doesn’t have energy storage technology yet — current technology isn’t cost effective — so energy generated by the solar panels can’t be stored.

Bruce Taylor told the DBJ, “Our next step is to test storage systems and see how well these work. As more renewables come online, they’re going to need to add storage to store the load for the local power company.”

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