Farmdeck providing solar powered IoT solutions
The demand for energy is one of the biggest and fastest rising costs within the agriculture industry, heightened by the rise of smart farming. In order to help alleviate operational costs due to high energy usage, farmers should look to employ agtech solutions that are not electricity dependent, but that generate solar energy.
The benefits of tapping into solar energy are immense, from reducing energy use and bills, to improving a farm’s energy productivity and reliability, to being able to support own-generation capacity while reducing a carbon footprint.
Through the use of solar electric panels (photovoltaics), a multitude of farm operations can be powered, like lighting, electric fences, large-scale irrigation and water pumps, weather stations, soil moisture monitoring equipment and heating/cooling livestock buildings.
With an increase in the number of agtech solutions available on the market, it may be confusing finding the right kind to power specific operations and to suit a farm’s distinct requirements. The IoT features available from Farmdeck are designed to meet unique customisations for each farm, no matter the size, and tap into renewable energy by using solar powered technologies.
Farmdeck’s energy-saving solar powered solutions, include:
- LoRaWAN gateway tower – boosts and heightens connectivity across a farm, especially in areas where access to a 4G network proves difficult. LoRa enables long-range transmissions with low power consumption, which makes it the perfect technology for farms facing low connectivity issues. To enable this solution, it is mounted to a solar powered LoRaWAN gateway on a tower, where the gateway acts as a bridge for the data to travel from the sensors to the cloud, before becoming available on the Farmdeck app in friendly, easy-to-read format.
- Surveillance and livestock monitoring IoT solutions – this feature doubles up as a security solution, that monitors movements of humans and vehicles, as well as livestock tracking solution, that makes livestock counting easy and reduces human error. This feature can easily distinguish between humans, vehicles, and livestock, making it possible to identify trespassers – along with facial and licence plate recognition, which increases the odds of retrieving the stolen assets.
- Soil monitoring IoT solution – a great way to provide you with better insight and understanding into your soil’s requirements, the soil monitoring IoT solution gives you the ability to monitor soil temperature, salinity, and moisture at various depths. By understanding your soil’s requirements, you can make sure that you are giving your land exactly what it needs to produce high-quality crops.
Luca Palermo, Farmdeck IoT Lead, says that through technology integration, efficiencies can be generated in farms of all sizes. “By introducing simple but effective technology into daily farming operations, farmers gain heightened visibility over multiple areas of the business, allowing them to take action to rectify inefficiencies.” These technologies don’t need to increase electricity usage, but, in fact, can reduce reliance while helping to better equip farmers through gaining invaluable insight into land use and animal activity.
Sources:
The Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources –
www.energy.gov.au/business/industry-sector-guides/agriculture
