IRRIGATION ENERGY EFFICIENCY

EVALUATIONS

Energy use - the unknown cost

The project – pilot study

• Funders EECA, Canterbury lines co, meridian, Environment Canterbury

• 15 on farm evaluations

1. Motor, pump, delivery system Efficiency & Performance

2. Scheduling/operation efficiency

The outputs

• Key Indicators

o Energy consumed per volume of water used, kWh/m3

o Power capacity per hectare kW/ha

o Cost per m3, $/ m3

o Volume of water used per hectare/ irrigator

o System capacity, mm/ha/day

Challenges

• Awareness of what water costs

• Data collection - is one flow meter enough?

• Bench marks

• Knowledge of what irrigators should be operating at flow and pressure

• Record keeping – as built plans, commissioning reports, performance testing reports

• Interpretation of data

What have we found

Huge Range

• Issues

• Costs

• Savings

• Solutions

• Paybacks

Differences within a property

AREA FLOW RATE

AREA SERVED ha

ELEC POWER DRAW kW

kW/Ha

Pivot 1 70 110.5 45 0.41 Pivot 2 60.8 99.5 45 0.45 West Sprinklers

12 36 18.5 0.51

Ocmis Gun 15 30 60 2.00 East/Gallery Sprinklers

N/A 30 22 0.73

Options for solutions

• Two pumps feeding two pivots using joined line

• PRV in network to reduce pressure.

• The pump curve indicates each putting out around 570kPa of pressure,

• actual measured pressure is 445kPa,

• restrictors using 125kPa of pressure.

Options for solutions

OPPORTUNITY CAPEX SAVINGS PAYBACK

Install a VSD on P1 and P2

$20,000 $7,980* 2.6 yrs

Reduce the impeller size on P1 and P2

$4,000 $5,980** 0.7 yrs

Issues – scheduling

• Photo of berry gallery

Issues - maintenance & compliance

Regular maintenance

Issue - system redesign

Issue - system redesign

Issue - system redesign

• Acton water charge $38 500• 25% = $9500 wasted because could not

access• Whole system revamp - $182,818.62

o $ 26,396 upgrading mainline o $ 156,422 new pivot.

• Access all of Acton water, more water, energy savings from mainline changes, better use of water

Issue – poor supply intake

Issue – poor supply intake

BEP flow Selected to supply

Delivering Cost p.a

Pump 1 75 71 52 $2136

Pump 2 51 41 33 $3944

$6080

Options to fix

What do we need to do

• Smarter use of water, and electricity, use data

• Farmers can find it difficult to interpret data - wary of information overload

• Need to have a starting point – commissioning and understanding very important- baseline to compare from set point within season and between seasons

• O and M important - be able to ID quantifiable change

Information and tools

• Tool that combines all of the data streams -Water use, electricity use, climate data.

• That spits out an automated monthly report with the Key Indicators for them to compare this months data against last month and the month before that ….

• Regular checks audit? Performance assessment?

• Asset management