Lighting Changes Promise Savings

Lighting Changes Promise Savings. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

There is a lot going on right now with lighting. New legislation is out-moding old lighting and new technologies are being developed. Jeremiah Higley, General Manager for Eco Tech an division of Automated Dairy Systems in Idaho who says they started out just by changing some lighting.

HIGLEY: We started doing lighting projects and within our first couple of projects the dairymen would get the rebate checks in their hands and they’re like “Wow, this is great. What else you got?” So we kinda snowballed from just lights to finding what kind of rebates might be available for upgrading compressors , variable speed drives, upgraded motors and pumps. Our focus is kind of broader now and basically we’re just trying to help conserve, control and create energy on the farms.

Higley was part of a panel discussion at this last weeks Harvesting Clean Energy Conference and he talks about the topic.

HIGLEY: Just about energy efficiency on the farm and some of the things that we can do. Basically our goal was in presenting what opportunities are out there for energy efficiency on the farm as well as what technologies you may or may not be able to take advantage on your farm in conjunction with utility and federal rebates that are out there. The purpose was really education as well as information.

There are a lot of projects that farm operations can look into.

HIGLEY: Based on the last 2 years farmers are looking at ways to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. As we know there is no such thing as a free lunch but if they can spend a moderate amount of money and get a good result and get on-going energy efficiency saving, they tend to be very keen on that. And we’ll be honest, if somebody else will help foot the bill a portion or a majority of a project, they’re definitely very interested in that.

Kind of like the old adage of you have to spend money to make money. Higley says there really are no downsides but does add a caution.

HIGLEY: There is a lot of new and emerging technology that’s coming into the marketplace that hasn’t necessarily been tested and tried in an agricultural application. So there have some products out there that have had less than stellar results when used in different applications.

If you’d like more information on the kinds of projects Eco Tech can help you with, visit their website at automateddairl.com and for additional information on other clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.???www.harvestcleanenergy.org