An Iowa business is putting a little more green into pizza consumption. On Thursday, May 8, the Pizza Ranch in Spirit Lake announced it will be installing 178KW of solar assets, with 518 solar panels that will produce enough energy to power their location. The panels, from Trusted Energy, will cover the entire roof of the building, leaving only the required safety set-back area. Owner of the Pizza Ranch, Terry Veldman says, “As we look into the future, we have to control some of our fixed costs to do business, thus we are choosing to generate our own power at a predictable rate. It is also the right thing to do for us and our customers. Solar just makes sense,” he adds. Vice President for Trusted Energy, Tony Petersen says that the business will be looking at a payback of the initial expense in less than five years. Currently, Federal and Iowa tax credits are available to help offset the costs of solar installations, which have been steadily dropping in price and are now 60 percent lower than they were just 10 years ago.
