Project Name: Coke Farms Cold Storage Facility
Location: San Juan Bautista, California
Client: Coke Farms
Design: Integrated Structures, Inc.
Engineering: Integrated Structures, Inc.
Contractor: Ausonio Construction Inc., Castroville, CA
Category: Cold Storage
DESCRIPTION:
Located in San Juan Bautista, Coke Farm has been growing organic fruits and vegetables since 1981, when Dale Coke began the farm with a ¼ acre of organic strawberries. Since then, Coke Farm has grown and evolved from an organic farming operation into a thriving organic produce aggregation company. They now work with more than 60 local growers, from 5-acre farms to 1000+ acre ranches. The cold storage facility expansion was designed and built with the Energy Mass™ wall system. The cooler provides a stable 34° F cooler for storage of fresh organic produce, which arrives from the Salinas valley fields, is processed and loaded into the cooler at the same time PG&E’s high demand rates apply (noon). The produce is flash cooled and stored in the cooler briefly and shipped out within a day or two. The high thermal mass storage of the Energy Mass™ wall delays the time when additional cooling is needed, and the R-100 insulation eliminates heat from the exterior skin of the building, reducing the amount of peak demand charges. The coolers’ design received a significant grant from the “Rural Energy for America Program” (REAP) for its innovation. This grant, coupled with energy savings from time of use shifting, resulted in an estimated simple payback of 3.9 years.
“We expanded our cold storage facility this summer utilizing the Active Energy Mass™ wall.We applied for a grant from USDA’s Rural Energy for America program and were awarded two and half times the amount we asked for.”
Dale Coke, President, Coke Farms