Quantifying On-Farm Energy Usage in the Australian Meat Chicken Industry

FSA Consulting

  • Project code: PRJ-005770

  • Project stage: Closed

  • Project start date: Monday, September 20, 2010

  • Project completion date: Sunday, March 31, 2013

  • National Priority: CME-Priority 1-Improving environmental sustainability outcomes

Summary

This project will provide an assessment of the on-farm energy usage of three grow out farms in the Australian meat chicken industry. The project will include assessment of the energy supply network, supply and installation of instrumentation to allow disaggregation of total energy use and benchmarking of these data. The data will be used to gain an understanding of energy usage within different activities and to improve the industry wide assessment in the LCA project (PRJ-4596). Following collation of data, recommendations will be made to the participating growers for ways to improve energy efficiency based on the results of the project.

Program

Chicken Meat

Research Organisation

FSA Consulting

Objective Summary

The objectives of the project are to:
•Quantify energy use and energy use profile for up to three meat chicken grow-out farms, including the different on-farm components and the variation in energy use over one year (all seasons).
•Provide actual segregated energy use data for the LCA project PRJ-4596.
•Assess current shedding management and design from an energy efficiency perspective and to determine where cost-savings could be made.