Energy Consumption and Improvement of the Energy Efficiency in the Agricultural Animal Husbandry

Abstract

A condition for the assessment of the energy efficiency of agricultural farms and the rating of possible savingspotentials is the orientation towards energetic reference values of the suitable production processes.With the help of long-term measurements of the power demand of single consumers on experimental farms main energy consumptionfields can be defined and different productionand engineering-technologies can be compared.With the help of measuring sensor head adjustments (optical devices for scanning of electric consumption meters) or directly measuring threeand single-phase alternating current counter are measured the whole power consumption of the production process or the single consumers. The stored data of 26 agricultural experimental farms up to now are transmitted by GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) to a central data bank server at the Institute of Agricultural Engineering and Animal Husbandry and afterwards with a spreadsheet evaluated.At the pig-holding farms as well as at dairy farms large electric energy consumption differences could be ascertained. The possible saving potential at single company level can be derived from it. With the time-itemized recording power consumption load profiles of the single production processes can be provided. In the result correspondent shares of own consumption can be calculated therefore in connection with performance profiles by photovoltaic plants.