Thursday, March 28, 2024

Energy savers lead the way

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More than 50 dairy farms are saving money on energy this season thanks to Government-backed energy efficiency incentives.
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Run by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), the programme has achieved its goal of having 50 farms on board with grants used for heat recovery equipment in retrofitted projects in existing dairies, and new installations. The grants are due to close at the end of June.

EECA business project manager, Kirk Archibald, said EECA had achieved a good representation of installations across the country.

“We’ve seen more projects at the larger end of the scale, but we’re happy that we’ve got a good set of projects and results across the board.”

The 50 farm dairies with heat recovery equipment installed now form a valuable feedback source to EECA on actual savings achieved and the relative success of the project.

Heat recovery technology that pulls heat lost through the milk cooling process back into heating dairy wash water offers the low hanging fruit opportunity for the industry to make some serious savings in its gross energy bill. Electricity use for heating hot water in dairying amounts to 24% of the $250 million annual dairy power bill. There’s potential for the industry to slice $30m a year off that simply through more efficient water heating using heat recovery. An additional $12m could be shaved off through vat insulation and installation of variable speed drives, amongst other actions.

EECA calculates if the whole industry installed heat recovery equipment, the savings would amount to the equivalent to all the electricity used by a city the size of Masterton, and individual farm savings would amount an average of $4000 a year.

Of the three key energy saving technologies available, including variable speed drives and vat insulation, heat recovery stands to reduce farm power bills by the greatest amount.

Archibald said so far the feedback from participating farmers had been positive. The installation includes a contract with service providers that the equipment will save at least 80% of the amount claimed in the proposal.

On average the equipment is saving 21% of farm energy costs and data collected from 15 farms so far has only one not meeting expected savings.

“Overall we are finding based on the data there is a payback period of only three years on the equipment.”

The average value of the grant is $4000, leaving on average $8000 to be paid by the farmer.

Another area of focus for EECA is variable speed drive (VSD) motors that match speed to the load placed on them. Work it carried out in 2012 showed a reduction of half in electricity use in vacuum pumps with VSDs fitted.

For farmers wanting to get a better idea of how their dairy energy consumption compares with other farms EECA has developed an online tool to calculate dairy efficiency.

Farmers go to www.eecabusiness.govt.nz/tools/dairy-tool and complete some simple questions on dairy configuration and electricity use. The tool benchmarks their dairy against 150 others around NZ then provides a dollar figure for their potential savings.

Archibald said farmer interest in energy efficiency might step up as new milk cooling regulations that require temperatures to be lowered from 7C to 6C within six hours of the start of milking come into play from 2016. In light of this EECA is reviewing its support for heat recovery programmes and whether a successor is needed.

“This is still work in progress for us, but early feedback is that many dairy farms aren’t currently compliant with that requirement.”

EECA is also moving its sights further down the processing chain with a new programme to be launched in July for meat and dairy plants. It aims to prevent 7000 tonnes of carbon from entering the atmosphere each year by identifying energy efficiency opportunities in these two processing sectors, the biggest producers of industrial heat.

 

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