COBDEN — The 140 cows on the Klaesi farm produce enough manure to power 30 homes.

For now, the cows power the farm — two houses and the barns — and in the winters the houses are hot. Brothers Paul and Fritz pay $30 to $50 a month for power instead of up to $2,700 for heating and electricity for the entire farm. The Klaesi brothers installed an Anerobic digester four years ago at a cost of $200,000, Paul Klaesi said. They were the first in Ontario to install one and they still have the only one that’s up and connected to the power grid.

Renfrew County was so impressed, officials nominated the Klaesi brothers for the first premier’s award for innovation. They placed second and were awarded $50,000. The top innovator, who earned $100,000, is a beekeeper in east central Ontario.

"Oh ya, we were surprised," Klaesi said. There were 236 entries.

The generator, which they imported from Germany, runs 17 hours a day using 15 cubic metres of manure, to produce 750 kilowatt hours of energy. They can even store energy. Their hydro meter runs backwards so they can build up credits for winter use. The manure is heated for 30 days in a 40 C tank and the methane gas generated is burned and becomes the power for their house and for the hydro company.

In summer, the digester sends power back to the power grid – their meter runs backwards and they can store credits for winter use.

No one would want to sell power back to the power authority right now because they are offering a poor deal, he said. You have to sign up for a 20-year-term at a fixed price. "So, in five or six years you would be selling at a low price," Klaesi said.

But that will change within months, he says, insisting that the province is in favor of the new energy source and a five-year pricing deal is the only way to open up the gates to digesters, he said. Within 10 years, more than 100 farms in Ontario will have digesters, he predicts. Technology is improving fast and his four-year-old generator is already considered an out-of-date clunker.

Future power sources won’t just be manure, he said, noting that OMAFRA is conducting an onsite experiment using his digester. Restaurant grease trap waste –commonly called French fry grease — is hauled in and put through a pasteurizer. Using the right bacteria the grease fumes become methane gas, which is then pumped to the generator to be converted to energy. Only two cubic metres of grease will produce the same amount of power as 140 cows, he said. "The challenge is to get the grease here," Klaesi said. "It’s an expensive process."

He added that in the future digesters will be fed vegetable sludge, feedmill dust and brewers’ grain. "This will be great," he said.

But farmers want to know is it practical for their farm. The simple answer is: not yet. There is is still a high level of technical knowledge required and hands-on work that is necessary, he said, adding that because he is an electrical engineer it has given him a lot of advantages, specifically because "Right now I have to do it all myself."

But as technology advances and the power companies start offering five-year deals to buy power, farms with 60 head or more are in business, he said.

Using methane for power is not new for Klaesi. Along with about three other farmers, they were first in Switzerland to experiment with a methane digester on a farm. That was 17 years ago.