Extension Sustainability Summit 2016

The milk you drink contains a lot of love from dairy farmers...and a lot of kilowatt hours.  Come explore the successes and challenges of delivering energy efficiency and solar electric services to Minnesota's dairy community. This presentation will track two collaborations - one with a milk cooperative, and one with a rural electric cooperative - toward putting dairy farms on a low-energy diet.  Participants will learn about the collaborative models, including how to identify dairy energy savings opportunities and targeting the right farms for technology upgrades.  

In addition, you will hear about the many challenges of working across multiple utility and USDA service territories, as well as how the personal circumstances of dairy farmers impact their technology decisions.  Finally, participants will hear about dairy farms and solar photovoltaics.  Once farms have addressed energy efficiency, the conversation nearly always pivots to solar PV and the farm’s ability to offset energy consumption, and, in some cases sell back some energy to the local utility.  This presentation will briefly explain on-farm solar siting best practices, as well as the economic under-currents of working with rural electric cooperatives on distributed solar electricity.