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Energy Co-op Saves Money by the Bushel with Urban Corn Granary

October 12, 2009
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A new structure in Mt. Rainier, Maryland is saving people money on home-heating bills by the bushel. The twenty-five-foot silo stands behind a parking lot and holds 20 tons of corn kernels. It's the second 'urban corn granary' in the country and the people who built it have gathered to inaugurate the first bushel.

The forty members of the Save Our Sky Home-Heating Cooperative burn kernels in special stoves to heat their homes.

Mike Tidwell's been using the co-op's first granary in nearby Tacoma Park. "My Toyota Prius will hold 15 five-gallon paint buckets full of corn. So every two weeks or so I take my empty buckets, I go to the corn granary in Tacoma Park, I fill them up, I put them back in my car, I put the buckets on my front porch and I pore them into my stove as needed."

It may sound like a lot of work, but Tidwell says he saves fifty-percent on heating bills compared with natural gas.

Mana Rabiee reports...

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