Farms set to test high-tech power supply alternatives

Some New Zealand farms are being set up with advanced energy technologies, giving rural residents increasing scope to generate their own electricity.

Restructuring of the electricity sector has left many rural electricity users vulnerable to soaring costs, as fewer customers over wider areas mean replacement and repair costs on power lines are higher than in urban areas.

Max Bradford, Energy Minister in the last National Government and an architect of the electricity reforms, in 1999 raised the opportunity for some companies to cut uneconomic rural lines, leaving remote properties to find alternative energy sources.

Mr Bradford said it might be more sensible for remote users to pay the "true cost" of accessing power.

After 2013, lines companies will no longer be legally obliged to supply power to every customer.

Some Labour ministers have since called for all rural electricity customers to be given a supply guarantee, after one big company suggested to then Consumer Affairs Minister Phillida Bunkle the "de-electrification" of rural districts by not maintaining lines to remote areas.

However, researchers at Massey University's centre for energy research, and at the crown science company Industrial Research, have started investigating on-farm electricity generation.

Test sites include three farms at Kumeroa, near Woodville, 27km east of Palmerston North; on D'Urville Island; Banks Peninsula; and at the university's South Auckland research farm, Limestone Downs.

Iain Sanders, of Industrial Research's Electrotec group in Christchurch, said that at the moment there were no plans to take the experimental farms off the national grid, but simply to reduce their reliance on electricity from off the farm.

"While it is politically unlikely that customers in rural areas will face disconnection from the national grid after 2013, it is in everyone's interests, including power companies, that affordable, reliable power is easily accessible," he told the Industrial Research newsletter, Innovate.

His company had provided equipment to monitor the 16 electricity loads on the three Manawatu farms, and one of them would soon be used for further work on evaluating integrated "distributed energy systems".

Professor Ralph Sims of Massey University is overseeing PhD student Phil Murray in his development of a systems approach to evaluating renewable energy sources from data obtained by the equipment on the Manawatu farms.

"Phil will investigate standalone renewable energy systems and compare them with grid-connected renewable energy systems previously worked on by Industrial Research," Mr Sanders said.

Systems already evaluated for the farms include solar photovoltaic (electricity from sunlight), solar hot water, wind power, micro-hydro and combined heat and power (co-generation) fuel-driven generators (gensets).

On one of the Kumeroa farms, Industrial Research will also install a solar hot water system, a micro-hydro scheme, and a power conditioning system.

Particular attention will be given to micro-hydro-electric generation from a stream running through one of the farms, which could provide up to 90 per cent of the three farms' total energy requirements.

Mr Sanders said this could be developed more cheaply than relying on the national grid.

Over the next year, the researchers will install a fuel cell, or genset, to kick in whenever the renewable energy systems are unable to meet demand.

- NZPA