Solar power has this uncanny ability of crossing industry lines, proving with growing regularity its far-reaching benefits as an energy source. Every day…up pops another example of businesses using solar to reduce their carbon footprint and save money at the same time. Today we have Sun Chips. In what perhaps is the most logical – if in name only – extensions of solar power’s reach, the company’s Modesto California production plant has installed a solar thermal plant to produce steam which, in turn, helps produce the famously sunny chips.
The four acre solar farm is made up of solar thermal collectors which heat water up to 450 degrees. This heated water is pumped to the facility’s boiler system where it contributes to the steam that cooks the wheat and heats the oil that is used to make Sun Chips.
The Modesto plant is just one of eight that produce Sun Chips but this is – as their website puts it – “a small step in the right direction.” This could well be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
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