The power bill has got 'rather extreme': New smart way to save

Michael O'Connor said his dairy farm's power bills had been rising 10 or 12 per cent a year over the past 20 years.

"It's got rather extreme the power bill. It's pushing up to $100 a day," he told The Standard.

"We thought we could do this and reduce our bill quite substantially, and do a little bit for the environment as well."

The solar they'd originally installed only covered their power needs during the day, so they turned to batteries.

Janet O'Connor said the Glenormiston South farm used the bulk of its power when milking cows which was before sunrise and in the evening - times when solar production was low.

"We're not like businesses who operate nine to five, they can just have solar but for us our power main usage is when it's dark in the morning and afternoon when there is not much sun," Mrs O'Connor said.

They already have plans to install another six batteries on top of the six that have been in operation for the past few weeks.

Once they install, they expect not to need to use power from the grid during summer.

"If we had six more batteries we wouldn't be grid reliant at all," Mrs O'Connor said.

In the United States there are 10,000 FranklingWH batteries in operation, but the O'Connor farm is the company's first large installation in Australia.

FranklinWH Energy Storage marketing director Brandon Sanchez travelled from the US to visit the south-west farm to see the equipment and its aGate smart system in action.

While the farm plans to have 12 batteries, he said a residential homeowner would only need one or two batteries.

Australian Enviro Projects Matt Harold said solar alone wasn't the answer for farms like the O'Connors'.

"The challenge for the dairy is they use most of the power outside sunlight hours, so they milk their cows when the sun comes up and when the sun goes down," Mr Harold said.

"The bills are huge.

"They keep going up every year."

Mr Harold said the new FranklinWH technology allowed them to store the power the solar produced during the day so they could use it when they milked their cows.

He said the installation included $50,000 worth of solar and $80,000 worth of batteries which would cut the farm's bills by 75 per cent with a five to six year return on investment, based on conservative figures.

When the extra six batteries were installed, the savings would be as high as 95 per cent.

"When they have the 12 batteries, it could rain for four days flat and they're still not going to draw from the grid," he said.

Mr Harold said batteries had been around for years but they had been too expensive. He said prices were coming down and it was becoming more economical.

Mr Harold said while power bills charged for usage there were also "demand" charges.

"...so they look at your usage for the month and they look at your maximum demand for that month and you get charged a hell of a lot of money for that small period of time," he said.

When demand hits a certain level, the batteries will kick in rather than drawing from the grid and bring savings, he said.

"The Franklin batteries aren't just a dumb battery that sit there and does nothing. They manage demand," Mr Harold said.

For big consumers of power, he said, demand charges often made up 30 to 40 per cent of their power bills.

Mrs O'Connor said summer demand power charges "absolutely kill", costing about $600 a month.

"With this, we are not drawing near as much out of the grid our summer demand will be negligible. That'll be a really big saving," she said.