An audit of a Mundubbera Citrus farm recommended fitting variable speed drives to pumps, and a 30kW solar PV system. The farmer has implemented the findings, reducing the pump size as well, and adding over 80kW of Solar PV to save over $41,000 per year in electricity costs with 156.9 t CO2-e of emission savings per annum.
The farm is a 100 hectare citrus producer located in the Mundubbera area with water sourced for irrigation from the underground aquifer. Citrus trees are irrigated using sprinklers beside each tree and the areas are divided into zones with water supply controlled by an irrigation management system which can be adjusted according to the season and weather conditions. Electricity consumption on-site is driven mainly by the irrigation pumping, packaging operations as well as refrigeration cold rooms, which are used during April to October.
Implementation of energy-saving initiatives has resulted in energy consumption avoidance of over 170MWh between the baseline season of October 2013-June 2014 and the reporting season of October 2014-June 2015. This equates to energy savings of 82kWh per tonne of fruit production. The farmer indicated it was helpful to have the information needed to make informed decisions. “Once I had all the information we went ahead with implementing the recommendations. Before installing our variable speed drives, we had to irrigate all three blocks to get rid of the pressure. Now we can just do one or two as required.”