First fully electric cherry orchard tasting success
Forest Lodge Orchard went fully electric from the start, and says not using fossil fuels makes financial sense.
Mike Casey’s story is a simple one, which became complicated fast.
He wanted to plant a 9300-tree cherry orchard. Simple.
He worked out that the trees would sequester 3.8 tonnes of carbon every year, and as he’d always wanted to do something in the climate space, he found this to be particularly cool.
However, it became a bit more complicated when he discovered that if the orchard was run with existing technology, it would emit about 60 tonnes of carbon every year.
As a software engineer, Casey went all geeky and technical on the challenge, and started a journey to be the first fully electrical and fossil fuel-free orchard in New Zealand.
Casey had to make decisions around key technologies the farm relied on.
Fans without diesel
He first imported electric frost-fighting fans from South Africa, with the help of an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority grant.
Fans to fight frost are critical to a cherry operation, because frost can destroy an entire crop in a matter of hours.
But orchard fans were usually diesel-driven, and would use 20 litres to 40L of diesel per hour, depending on the model.
With frost usually lasting between two and 12 hours, and diesel near $2.70 a litre, the cost ramped up quickly, he says.
With this single purchase, he brought costs down to near $3 per hour.
The fans are run from the national grid, but also use solar power stored in batteries. Batteries on their own are not enough to run fans through an entire night.
Casey also wrote software that, by calculating the price of power on the wholesale spot price market, would decide if the fans would be run from the grid or from batteries.
His goal was to go fossil fuel-free, but he was happy to find he’d done better than he’s hoped: the 2.8 tonnes of emissions he generated from applying fertiliser was offset by his trees, with spare change left.
Casey says there was some luck involved in him being a newbie to growing, which meant he could go fossil fuelfree from the start.
New Zealand has one of the most renewable grids in the world, but still produces some carbon per kilowatt hour.
This year the orchard consumed less than 5 tonnes of emissions through its power use via the national grid. A traditional orchard made between 60 tonnes to 80 tonnes worth per year, Casey said.
Initially, the orchard had trouble finding an insurer that would provide cover. Electric fans were seen as a liability, because they could fail if there was a power outage.
But Casey worked with rural insurer Vero, which came up with a plan that insured against an outage. This meant there was one fewer obstacle for growers to worry about when converting to electric.
Irrigation from solar
Another key piece to an orchard is irrigation.
The farm’s irrigation was set up to be mainly driven by solar power that fed an electric pump.
Luckily, most irrigation is done during daylight hours, and the pump can draw energy from the Sun.
The grid-connected hybrid system uses solar and batteries as much as it can, Casey says.
When grid power is cheap and abundant, it is either used or stored in batteries.
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When power is expensive, and there is high demand, the orchard actually exports power back into the grid.
Casey believes the orchard is close to having a net-zero energy bill, including line charges.
‘‘We earn money when the price is high, and try to make sure the average price we buy at is low,’’ he says.
‘‘We are saving just under $49,000 in energy costs per year by doing what we have done.’’
The capital cost of building an electric system is more expensive than starting with a diesel-based system.
Depending on whether you start a completely new orchard, or are replacing diesel infrastructure with electric, the system can be paid back in either seven or 15 years, Casey says.
He said that in a way, he and business partner Euan White were in luck because they could go full electric from the beginning.
Casey is also busy converting a ute to electric – inspired by a company called EVLutions.
Electric tractor
The one remaining bottleneck for Casey was electric tractors.
A company in Christchurch converted a small tractor to electric for him, and he is also first on a list to get a Monarch commercial electric tractor when it comes off the production line in California.
This is one of the last steps to becoming fully electric, while being just as productive as orchards that use diesel.
At the moment, Casey believes a diesel tractor is more efficient. But a Monarch tractor would solve this challenge because it would not have to be charged every couple of hours, he says.
Showing the way
To convince other growers to also convert to an electric system, Casey says he had to be transparent about exactly what his costs were.
He therefore broke down the costs of using diesel versus electric in a presentation on his website for all to see. The payback periods are also free to see.
The cost to go all-electric was more expensive than diesel and the standard grid, he says, but it was cheaper in the long run.
There is nothing stopping growers from going fully electric or making changes to their systems as they upgrade technology, he says.
‘‘Rather than being someone in Wellington telling farmers what to do, we are showing them that we did it and what the numbers are.’’
As a computer programmer who did not come from a farm background, he had a lot of help from the community, who showed him how to grow good cherries, he says. Now he is giving back to them by showcasing a cheaper and better way to power an orchard.
About a thousand growers have visited the orchard to see what he is doing.
‘‘Farmers are inquisitive and smart, and are always looking for new ways to do things,’’ he says.
The cherry orchard has been successfully fossil fuel-free for 18 months.
Although the time has been too short to see if many other growers have adapted to electric, Casey says he’s seen small changes, like the use of golf carts instead of quad bikes, adopted in a few orchards.
There is at least one other orchard that is importing electric fans.
He says the increasing price of diesel is convincing others to follow suit.
Cutting emissions, not offsetting
Casey is working with Assure Quality to create a fossil fuel-free certification.
‘‘People are becoming quite jaded by the offset argument. If you pick up a zero-carbon beer, what does it mean? Did they actually eliminate emissions, or were they continuing on the same path but were buying offsets?’’
Labelling products NZ Zero would be easier to understand, as it meant a grower did not use fossils during production, he says.
‘‘It is important not to let perfection be the enemy when it comes to making changes onfarm. We need to start by looking at the choices we make for things we can control,’’ he says.
Words: Gerhard Uys Photos: Miles Holden