Now besides producing " great cheese", California's happy cows will also be providing power to its residents. Earlier this week, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), California's utility company in collaboration with BioEnergy Solutions, unveiled a system that will collect manure (cow poop) from a dairy farm and refine it into biogas, (almost the same as natural gas).

BioEnergy Solutions has built a system, which collects the manure in a large pit. It than lets naturally occurring bacteria to break it down. This results in the release of methane (natural gas). The gas is then collected and trapped into a number of steel tanks, where any other gases are removed. The methane will then be fed to PG&E's natural gas pipelines.

The company expects to generate enough gas to power 1200 homes from this single farm. BioEnergy expects to provide PG&E with a total of 3 billion cubic feet of gas this year - enough to power over 50,000 homes.

With over 2 million dairy cows in California, PG&E believes it will be able to generate over 5% of its power requirements from this new renewable energy source.  Add to this the extra income that will be generated by dairy farmers from something that is a nuisance and produces an environmentally harmful gas (methane), if released directly into the atmosphere - it's a win-win situation for all.

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