A dairy farmer at Athlone has taken his farm off-grid and continues to experiment with renewable energy systems to gauge best investment.
Lindsay Anderson brought his expertise as an electrical engineer into his farming business to identify the best renewable energy for his use.
His latest innovation is to enable all his calf paddocks to be irrigated using solar energy.
Some years ago, Lindsay used the Our Farm, Our Plan project to develop his farm plan and renewable energy strategies. It means he has the data and plans available to support funding applications to help fund his micro-grid infrastructure.
Our Farm, Our Plan is a program developed by Dairy Australia, Gardiner Dairy Foundation and Dairy New Zealand and aims to help farmers clarify business and personal goals, and prioritise activities on the farm.
Lindsay used his Our Farm, Our Plan to support a farm energy assessment, an application to invest in farm infrastructure (when he purchased silage bale feeders), an application to the On Farm Energy Tier 1 grant to install a four-horsepower cooling plant last year, and an application to the Agriculture Energy Investment Plan grants and rebates program helped him purchase and install four hybrid inverters.
He purchased three silage bale feeders with farm infrastructure funding. Two racks are at the dairy, and one in the paddock.
“When we move the cows into a new paddock, we move the bale feeder rack into that paddock,” Lindsay said.
“We also feed silage in a rack at the entry and exit gates to the dairy. The cows can eat silage while they wait.”
Lindsay is also currently testing three different wind energy systems to decide how the infrastructure can work for his dairy.
Establishing his own networked micro-grid has given him independence and provided business stability when electricity blackouts were previously commonplace for him.
“I effectively run three micro-grids to power the farm,” Lindsay said.
He is an early adopter of automatic milking systems (AMS or robots), retrofitting his dairy shed to install an initial Insentec Astrea 20.20 double box in 2011, followed by another two double boxes. Two of the double boxes are in full-time use.
“I started with one double box and bought the other two in Queensland, and transported them here and installed them,” he said.
Installing the Insentec Astrea system also enabled Lindsay to upgrade the dairy shed, which benefited his move off-grid.
“The shed was originally two-phase. When the robots [AMS] arrived, I converted the shed to three-phase.
“Solar better suits the robots because of constant power use.
“With regular grid power fluctuations, we then separated the dairy shed from the grid.”
A recent business partnership split saw the 400-head Jersey herd reduced to 150 milkers.
Lindsay batch milks, with one herd milking 2.5 times daily, a second herd of cows milking twice a day, and a third herd of milkers going to the dairy once a day.
His theory is his cows will maximise using the robots — he prioritises cows fresh in milk.
It has also helped him maximise grazing, with high production cows getting first access to fresh paddocks.
Lindsay’s family has been milking Jersey cows in the West Gippsland district for more than 100 years, and the generation above him still takes an active interest in the farm business.
While the herd reduction has hit him hard, he is bouncing back and remains committed to dairy farming.
“I mated everything last year to sexed semen, so I have a heap of heifers coming into the herd.”
Even before adopting the AMS, he was already moving the farm off-grid.
“The initial solar panels were installed in 2008.
“Everything has a use-by or redundancy date, but you’re still better off putting money into installing solar panels on your farm. Solar panels are a 20-year investment on the farm.”
He believes in building redundancy into infrastructure.
“I built redundancy into the micro-grids. I built three micro-grids so if something goes wrong with one, I’ve got back-up.
“Last Friday, one inverter developed a fault, so we were able to swap over to another micro-grid.
“I let the inverters do all the hard work. I have a 400-volt, three-phase circuit.”
The dairy shed operates on solar, and batteries charge during the day. In addition to lights and the robots, the chilling system, milk vat and hot water service are powered by solar panels.
At night, if the batteries are depleted of power, for example because of less sunlight during short winter days, a generator backs up the system.
But Lindsay has installed a lot of solar panels over the past 10 years, and varied their placement so they catch the sun in the east and west, and the northerly aspect.
“I recommend people really think about their panel orientation,” he said.
“The panels on the dairy shed are hipped north-south, facing west or east. I also have flat panels and panels on an angle that are north-facing on the shed roof.
“I worked out that optimum year-round solar energy production resulted from panels facing north at our latitude. North gives us peak yield in the middle of the day and the infrastructure is generating power until the sun goes down.
“It provides me with more usable power rather than relying on peak solar energy production.
“Many people just focus on how much power they harvest during the middle of the day. Outside the latitude of saturation point, it’s the shoulder power you want to harvest, in the early morning and from mid-afternoon.
“The batteries don’t kick in to be used until late afternoon.”