Inline with our mission to generate and supply green sustainable energy to our local community, we are now fully operational with our private wire connection to a neighbouring poultry farm, which went live a week ago.
At the start of 2020, we began a discussion to supply the large scale unit 1.5km to the west of our site. With the assistance of East Solutions we designed a scheme whereby the renewable power generated from our site would firstly feed the poultry unit and secondly any spare power generated will be fed into the National grid.
A consistent supply of power to the poultry unit is critical. The generation of renewable power comes from our Powerlink biogas engine. If generation fails, then grid based power takes over and is fed seamlessly down the same line. The cable passed over three ownerships of land and a drainage board culvert, which added complexity to the scheme, but we have successfully negotiated and agreed the legal easements.
To minimise disruption to the agricultural land under which the cable passed, the installation took place at the end of the harvest period.
The private wire has a 1MW capacity and it’s expected that the load requirement of the farm will be between 600-700 kw. The farm is using geothermal heat pumps to heat the poultry units.
The project is completely carbon neutral, no carbon is burnt, used in the generation or consumption.
There are a series of advantages to the private wire connection. Ultimately, this can offer significant cost savings - the price of power can be negotiated between ourselves and the farm directly. We can minimise peak consumption charges for large scale electricity users - such as capacity, transmission and distribution charges, smoothing pricing levels.