Optimizing Farm Energy Usage

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

The cost of power, especially in California is significant for farmers. Moving water and irrigating crops requires quite a bit of energy. Wexus Technologies has built a software platform to help growers optimize their energy and water consumption to save money.

CEO and Co-Founder Chris Terrell explains how it works.

Terrell … “The first step is usually taking a look at their utility rates. They may be on the wrong rate, might not be optimized, and you get charged for your energy consumption based on when you use it. We often find a lot of times we're mining through a huge amount of data on their consumption, and we can put them on the right plan and that can often save 10 to 20% right off the bat. And then our system tracks it and tracks the savings over time based on their consumption or irrigation schedule. And that's usually the first place to start. And then we just start digging a little bit deeper on efficiency. A retrofit, there's a lot of money out there financing, rebates, utility programs, things like that, to upgrade pumps, upgrade infrastructure. May put some, additional sensors on there, real time tracking. Then the third area is usually with renewable energy integration. So a lot of growers have solar. And those systems also need to make sure they're tracking, your optimized, so that's not drifting and driving your maximum energy production and your ROI.”

The company has been getting extra attention lately with the rise in interest in regenerative farming. Growers can get a free proposal at www.WexusApp.com.