Helping farmers improve energy use
That is the mission of a new business Solayer NZ which has been founded in the heart of the Central Otago farming community to connect farmers with sustainable energy options.
Ranfurly vet, farmer and sustainability advocate Becks Smith, founder of The Whole Story, became inspired after a podcast episode featuring Mike Casey, the electricity entrepreneur and orchardist.
It got her thinking about farm energy efficiency and then farm energy generation and she decided she wanted to put some solar panels on the Smith family farm.
While she did the farm's accounts, she had never really looked at the electricity bill. She discovered electricity for irrigation was $28,000 a year and thought the family must be able to do something about that.
Eager to put some solar panels at the irrigation pump site, Mrs Smith called various companies but discovered she did not understand the language used and representatives tended to want to spend half a day on farm talking and had "no concept of farmer time".
The process was not as easy as she thought it should be, so she decided to start a service offering to support farmers.
But she realised she could not do it by herself, so she partnered with Lauder-based Dunstan Brook-Miller, whose background was in environmental science, energy and electricity, and David O'Sullivan, from Cambrians, who understood project management and "building things".
The first 55kW ground mounted solar system was installed in a paddock by the irrigation pump shed on the Smith farm in January this year. Since then, Solayer had done another five installations.
Those installations were all in the Maniototo and the business had proposals out through wider Otago.
They could handle inquiries from throughout New Zealand as they had partnered with others to deliver the installations.
"We've really recognised our opportunity to support farmers to get the right solutions," she said.
Primarily, the purpose was to offset farm working expenses. Their system sat in the mid-scale solution category, for those wanting to offset expenses and build some resilience into their business.
As a vet, Mrs Smith said she had spent 15 years working out ways of optimising farm solutions. Solar was one way that, if farmers invested in it, they did not risk anything or have to compromise on performance. As a farmer, that was "huge" for her.
Involved herself with on-site installing, it was practical problem-solving in the field. Similar to the veterinary profession, "you can see progress and know you're making a difference", she said.
Looking at the energy eco-system in New Zealand, power costs were only going one way and there had to be a shift away from fossil fuels.
Once farmers were comfortable with how they generated their own energy, then energy efficiency on-farm needed to be addressed, she said.
Mrs Smith was fascinated with what Mr Casey had done for cherries, with his all-electric orchard in Central Otago, and she questioned what an electric — or even energy efficient — sheep and beef farm looked like in New Zealand.
sally.rae@odt.co.nz
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