{"id":24195,"date":"2022-03-18T11:23:06","date_gmt":"2022-03-18T09:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/?p=24195"},"modified":"2022-03-21T19:53:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T17:53:09","slug":"chicken-farming-with-solar-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/2022\/03\/18\/chicken-farming-with-solar-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicken Farming with Solar Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Spanish Farmer – Casa Nilo SL – has invested 4 million euros establishing the largest privately-owned chicken barn in the Catalonian province of Lleida. Situated in Arbeca, 40,000 breeding birds, and 4,000 roosters are free to roam the floor of a temperature controlled rearing shed, powered by solar energy.<\/div>\n
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The chickens are raised in a temperature-controlled atmosphere of between 23\u00b0C and 24\u00b0C in winter, rising to a maximum of 26\u00b0C in summer.<\/span><\/div>\n
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The new farm – known as Granja Finet – complements two others owned by Josep Carrera located at Els Alam\u00fan and Vila-sana. This latest investment increases his stock holding to over 130,000 birds – but this is his first venture into solar-powered off-grid farming.<\/div>\n
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System Designer Francisco Blasco<\/em> and his team at\u00a0Iser Smart Energy<\/a>\u00a0 – who worked in partnership with Bet Solar<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0faced considerable challenges in calculating the energy needs of the plant – not least because there are so few examples of this kind of installation on this scale. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Se\u00f1or Blasco says: We were not very clear about the storage needs to be able to have energy at night, and also the differences in consumption throughout the year.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/span>Thus, data from other older farms were taken, and then oversized in a prudent manner. Being one of the largest farms of this type in Spain – and in this part of Europe – it was prudent to install an auxiliary system made up of several diesel generators to avoid problems. The results, in terms of the power of the inverters and the photovoltaic array, were very successful. <\/em><\/p>\n

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Francisco Blasco<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite having a large battery of 370 kWh, that figure proved inadequate on the hottest days of summer due to the high power consumption of the cooling system at night. Because of that the energy storage capacity has been expanded by an additional 93 kWh, bringing the battery to 462 kWh.<\/em><\/p>\n

The installation comprises:<\/p>\n