Australian Farmers Switch To Diesel Power As Electricity Prices Soar (abc.net.au)

"As power prices rise, some farmers have been forced to turn off the pumps," reports the Australian Broadcast Corporation. Long-time Slashdot reader connect4 shared their report from the coast of Queensland, where the price of pumping water to sugarcane fields has doubled. Local irrigators council representative, Dale Hollis, says right now, irrigators have two options. "They have to switch off the pumps and go back to dryland [cropping], and that impacts upon the productivity of the region and impacts on jobs" he said. "The second option is to go off the grid and look at alternatives." Another option is solar and there are plenty of farmers installing panels, but many growers irrigate at night and can't afford the millions of dollars it could take to buy battery storage. That's pushing many of them back to a dirtier option. "Right now, diesel stacks up," Mr Hollis said.
The head of farm operations for a sugar producer says it's now 30% cheaper to pump water with diesel than electricity, even before you count the subsidy from the federal government, and they expect to save even more money as energy prices go up.

Comments

Some Solar, with a gravity battery?

[berchca]

Going off the grid always sounds so complete and final, but couldn't they set up _some_ amount of solar panels that pump into raised storage tanks during the day, then irrigate with that water during the night? Seems like any power saved is good for the wallet (and, vs. diesel, good for the planet).

Re:Some Solar, with a gravity battery?

[lgw]

Going off the grid always sounds so complete and final, but couldn't they set up _some_ amount of solar panels that pump into raised storage tanks during the day, then irrigate with that water during the night? Seems like any power saved is good for the wallet (and, vs. diesel, good for the planet).

Because "raised storage tanks" are far more expensive than diesel generators?

Re:Some Solar, with a gravity battery?

[rgmoore]

There is no reason to do that.

Sure there is. Farmers, especially ones in areas where water is the limiting factor in how much they can grow, are worried about losses to evaporation. Those losses can be minimized by irrigating at night, when it's cooler and water evaporates more slowly. Depending on the economics and the water supply, it may make sense to adopt a more expensive irrigation strategy if it conserves water.

Why would you use batteries?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If you are using electricity to pump water; and want the water at night, why would you use batteries; rather than 'gravity'? You don't need to elevate water much to get it to flow downhill; and storing water a few meters above ground level is cheaper and more mature than battery tech by a substantial margin.

(Now, anyone for a bet on how many years these guys have before 'finding groundwater that still exists' becomes a markedly more exciting challenge than 'pumping it' is?)

How does this happen?

[djinn6]

If a farmer can run a diesel pump, then a power company can run a diesel plant for even less. Either the government's diesel subsidies are too high or they let the power company get too greedy.

Re:Why aren't the generators using Diesel?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Depending on how far out in the sticks they are, transmission costs probably don't help; nor does the fact that using a diesel pump is going to turn diesel into water-moved-where-you-want-it more efficiently than running a diesel generator, transmission lines to the desired location, and then running an electric pump unless the engine in question is small enough that it can't get even close to the efficiency that larger heat engines enjoy.

Re:How those solar panels working out for you?

[Streetlight]

Windmills are still being used to pump water in my part of the US - the Colorado Plains and Western Nebraska. The water, though, is not for cops but for cattle watering. For crops, including corn, it seems there's a mixture of motorized pumps and electric I'd guess depending on the availability of electricity.
I wonder why sugar cane is being grown in what I assume is a pretty dry climate using irrigation. The Aussies might want to look at the history of irrigation farming in places like West Texas where wells kept getting deeper and deeper until it was economically unsustainable to pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer thousands of feed down. The destruction of this water supply has had major economic consequences. Of course in Texas, there's something else that can be pumped from the ground: black gold.

Re:The fallacy of the free market theory

[Anonymous Coward]

At least in Ontario, electricity prices have become obscenely expensive recently to try and get people to reduce consumption.

The solution our factories have come up with is to close up shop, lay off their workforces and move to Mexico.

It does reduce electricity use though, so the government is happy.

Re:Why aren't the generators using Diesel?

[AmiMoJo]

Cost of building grid scale diesel power stations, environmental protections that don't apply to small businesses etc.

In any case, if you are going to invest in new generating capacity it would make more sense to go for renewables. Cheaper to build, cheaper to run, faster to bring online.