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understand the energy use in your business.
While we have seen a recent slowdown in the increase of energy prices and a rapid fall in the oil price, the long-term view remains that energy prices can only continue to go up overall as we face a number of challenges to our energy supply. Therefore, each business needs to ensure it understands the energy it is using every day.
METERING
The first place to start for many businesses will be metering of the fuels being used. Understanding how and when energy is used will become ever more important and not only will it be needed for financial control of the business, but probably also for reporting to customers and Government bodies in due course.
Therefore, there are a number of things to be aware of. Firstly, ensure you are accurately metering use of electricity, fuel oils and gas. This should not only be through meters at the point of purchase, but also through sub-meters at different points of use.
Smart metering is being introduced as a legal
requirement by the Government. It is worth understanding which metered supplies will be switched over by your utility supplier over the next few years.
Some farms will have a three phase meter that is Class 3 to 8; you can find the class from your electricity bill. These meters will be renewed with smart meters by 2017.
LIGHTING
This might not seem an obvious one, but when you have sub-metering in place you can start to understand the amount of electricity being used for lighting on a daily basis. If you have lights operating for more than six hours a day it is highly likely it will be a prudent investment to replace these with LEDs.
There are a number of suppliers which are providing LEDs that are suitable for the harsher environments that agriculture can present and this coupled with daylight and presence control can provide significantly beneficial returns. Furthermore, it is worth encouraging staff to switch lights off as this simple cost free measure can have significant benefits.
HEAT
On a dairy farm heat is often required for hot water to be used in the milking parlour and dairy on a daily basis. There can be ways of generating this heat more efficiently and even though support is likely to be removed these should still be considered further. These include, solar PV immersion heaters with smart controls, solar thermal panels linked to buffer vessels and potentially biomass when the heat and hot water demand is particularly large.
PUMPS A dairy will typically use a number of pumps for moving different liquids around. These can be replaced with variable speed drives with temperature or pressure controls.
COOLING
There is a demand for cooling and we have seen advances in bulk tank technology over the last decade or so that have changed the ways that many farms cool their milk with the introduction of high efficiency plate coolers.
This heat exchange takes most of the heat out of the milk before it needs to be chilled. Cooling is highly energy intensive, so consider replacement with higher efficiency plant, regular maintenance and high levels of insulation to retain the precious cool energy. There is a further case here to generate electricity for direct use of cooling and pump equipment.
ENERGY PROCUREMENT All farmers should consider re-negotiating their electricity contracts to find the best price or join a cooperative to take advantage of bulk purchase economies.
Dairy farms are businesses that are used to paying attention to the detail and controlling all their costs, particularly in the current challenging climate of low milk prices. The time and effort, therefore, required to understand energy use, often at minimal initial expenditure, will prove to be time well spent as it can give a good financial return from the investment made and enable control of a variable aspect of the business. While Government support for renewable energy generation is defi nitely going to reduce the focus is only going to increase on forcing businesses to understand their energy use and reduce it so as to reduce carbon emissions.
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