(orchestral music) (orchestral music) - I am here with Jim Verde from Verde Vineyards.

And Jim, we came here today to talk to you because the film we're doing on climate change also has to do with alternative energy.

And I know you have three different types of systems that you've been working with over the years in terms of alternative energy that helps you out on the farm here.

One of them is the solar panels that you have.

You have a battery system that also helps you.

And the third one is-- - The geothermal.

- The geothermal.

I was wondering if you could tell me something a little bit in terms of the geothermal and how that works.

- Well, the geothermal energy is dependent on the fact that the ground is always 54 degrees.

And it's always 54 degrees because sunlight hitting the earth during spring, summer, and fall, half of that energy is going into the ground in the form of heat.

And so, it's very similar to a refrigerator.

You want to take heat out of your refrigerator and you'll notice that no matter how fancy your refrigerator is in the back of it there always has to be a system of coils.

And so, we use the electricity that we make here to run compresses that will compress the air coming from the ground.

Similar to when I was a kid, if you pumped up a bicycle tire too much it would get warm.

So we're doing the same thing with a geothermal system.

The ground is about 54, 52 degrees.

We take that air and we compress it and then we wanna release it very quickly.

In the case of the refrigerator, you wanna get rid of that hot because there's no way to measure cool in science, it's just the absence of heat.

So your refrigerator appears to be cold 'cause you've gotten rid of the heat.

And so, that hot air we blow around to the tasting room.

- [Alex] Which provides your heat source.

- Which provides a heat source.

In the summer, it's quite inexpensive to run because the ground is 52.

We simply put hot air from let's say 85 degree air from the inside of the tasting room into the ground.

And it goes down 800 feet, comes up 800 feet.

And in that process, it cools off.

- [Alex] You have air condition.

- [Jim] So that's our air conditioning, yes.

- [Alex] Now your solar panels, I'm assuming they're charging your batteries?

- Yeah, well that's the great advantage.

If there's a power outage I hardly know it because the batteries have been storing electricity.

In fact, I think the electric company will also give me a break and suck out electricity let's say during the hot weather months from my battery.

The advantages of having a battery system as opposed to a generator, which runs on fossil fuel, is that my photovoltaic panels, which you call solar panels, will recharge those batteries every day.

And so, works out well so that the energy that I use here is really pays for itself basically.

- And it doesn't cause any harm to the environment.

- [Jim] Well, hardly at all.

- Yeah, right.

And so, the Rhode Island Energy Company, I've been having some conversations with them.

They are now offering grants to Rhode Island farmers to use an alternative source of energy on their farms.

A vineyard is a farm.

It's just a different type of farm.

You're not growing vegetables, you're growing grapes.

You don't have any cattle, but that's okay.

You're still utilizing a portion of land to produce something that people enjoy.

Is there anything that you do in particular when it comes to working with the vines in terms of changing the soil at all?

Or is that all done on its own?

- Well, that's done on its own.

We apply organic fertilizers from time-to-time.

Lime 'cause our soils are quite acid.

I understand right around the corner, there are going to be electrically powered tractors soon.

- Oh, I've heard about that, yeah.

- So we already have electric powered because there's such wonderful things happening with batteries.

So there are chainsaws that run electrically that do rather well.

You don't have to charge them as often.

So that would be a big breakthrough too.

I do feel a little guilty about my tractor with its diesel, but it's-- - But it's a necessary thing right now.

- Right now anyway, yeah.

- [Alex] Yeah.

We talked about the yield that you had this year.

We had some pretty extreme heat.

And do you think the heat might have affected the yield of grapes?

- That's hard to say.

I've learned as a mushroom hunter from the past when I was a child, my relatives had all kinds of ideas of why the mushrooms were not coming out this year.

And so, I've really given up trying to fathom the agenda that Mother Nature has.

It was very, very warm.

We got our lowest yield ever.

I can't tell really what caused that.

Many times when vines reach middle age or old age, their yield declines.

But most of my grapes here are hybrids and they haven't been around here long enough for us to make that calculation.

- Well, I know it was very hot this summer and the drought was incredible.

Do you spend any time watering the vines?

- I can't here because it would cost too much money to put in a well.

I would need tremendous amounts of water.

But these grape roots for the hybrids go down six feet.

So they did well in the drought.

Also, the drought helped prevent certain fungal diseases from occurring.

And so, I've given up.

I've decided after all these years, there's no such thing as a Goldilocks year where it's not too warm, not too cold, so on and so forth.

But the proof is in the pudding.

The wine's fantastic this year.

- [Alex] Great.

- And so that's our reward of putting up with all these worries all year long when we finally taste that new wine.

- Jim, would you recommend to other farmers to look into Rhode Island energy in terms of receiving possible grant funds to use alternative energy on their farms?

Do you think it could be a benefit?

- It sure could.

It helped me a great deal.

I received grants from the Department of Agriculture.

And yeah, I haven't kept up with the latest availability of the grants.

But it certainly helped me a great deal.

- Yeah, I think and I'm not sure about this, but as the weather changes, I know in California they were not able to plant a number of tomato crops because of the extreme heat this year.

And I know there is one farmer in South County who's trying to put up a number of greenhouses where he will be growing tomatoes inside.

I'm assuming that if things get bad enough in the west and down south where maybe we don't receive food like we do on a regular basis, that maybe greenhouses need to be used a little bit more in the New England area where possibly we can use them year round.

If that's the case, they'll need heat.

And I think this is a wonderful way of using alternative energy to heat a greenhouse I would think in the wintertime.

Or at least for a longer season.

Maybe not in the deep winter, but at least giving us a longer season to grow.

Starting early spring with plugs in a greenhouse, which many farmers do now.

And maybe growing into the fall a little bit more than what they do now.

- [Jim] Well, the Department of Agriculture and the state provide information and grants for greenhouses.

So, one could look into that.

So we do have the Rhode Island Resource Development Council here on Hartford Avenue in Johnston.

And can provide you all the information about getting grants for geothermal greenhouses.

- The resources are available in Rhode Island for farmers.

Alternative energy seems to be available for farmers.

You've had your alternative energy now for how many years would you say?

- Oh, probably about eight years now.

- [Alex] About eight years.

So you were really ahead of the curve, kind of.

- I like to think so.

- Yeah.

And I'm hoping a lot of the young farmers who are coming in with the small farms that they have because land's not plentiful and very expensive, hopefully they would take advantage of some of these agencies to start using renewable energy.

I know they're doing a lot of other things in terms of no-till and they're doing cover crops to regenerate the soil.

There's a lot of really good things going on.

- And things have changed in eight years.

Some photovoltaic panels are cheaper now than they were before.

- I've heard that.

- And the payback period seems to be lower and lower because energy costs are going high.

So the shorter the payback period the more expensive the energy is or vice versa.

So things are looking good for alternative energy here.

- Well, I know for the most part the vines like the heat.

Correct?

The sunlight?

- It's sunlight that's most important.

As I said before, there's never any Goldilocks year that we have.

- But the last thing we want is to get fungus growing from too much rain.

- The last thing that we want is something like last July when it rained almost the whole month.

But luckily there are a lot of organic fungicides available if you care to use them.

- All right, Jim, thank you very much for letting us come by today and talking with us.

I appreciate it.

- Well, I do as well.

It's good to be with you.

- It's good talking with you.

- Thank you.

- Thanks very much.

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