Australia’s largest off-grid poultry farm has commenced operations near Goolgowi. Operated by Agright, a commercial poultry grower in Australia and New Zealand, the 40 shed operation ‘Meriki’ claims to be saving more than 1690 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

"Sustainability is at the forefront of our business model,” Agright owner Daniel Bryant said. “Chicken is already the meat protein with the lowest carbon footprint, but we are continually looking for ways to reduce this footprint further."

Bryant is the son of Max, the New Zealand businessman behind the establishment of the ProTen poultry empire, before his retirement in 2018.

The high costs and logistical difficulties of connecting to the grid necessitated an innovative off-grid solution for Meriki, and Agright partnered with Australian company Smart Commercial Solar. The location of the proposed site was more than 19 kilometres from the closest grid connection, but the local network was already overloaded. Rather than change sites Bryan set about seeking off-grid solutions.

“This advanced system powers a small village of six staff houses, 40 large chicken barns, and associated buildings,” a Smart Commercial Solar spokesperson said. Mr Bryant appeared at an online media briefing in July.

“We grow chickens for the leading processors in New Zealand and Australia under long term contracts, and electricity and gas are probably our largest input costs, alongside labour,” Mr Bryant explained.

“So investing in solar quite heavily actually provides us with reasonable returns on top of ESG requirements.”

“Given that it was going to take a couple of years to connect to the grid, we could build a solar and battery system quicker,” Smart CEO Huon Hoogesteger said.

The Goolgowi development encompasses 3.98 MW ground-mounted solar panels that track the sun, a 3.4 MVA PV inverter and 4.4 MWh of battery storage. The network uses a private distribution network of powerlines, covering more than four kilometres, as well as six diesel generations for backup.

“From this central location where the solar and battery system is we distribute that power through an 11 kV line in three directions or more (to supply power the 40 sheds and six homes) and then some extended lines out to water pumps and freezers,” Hoogesteger said.

While it’s early days Agright says the operation is competely running on renewable energy.

“The whole system is backed up by 2MW of synchronous generators and then the farms, themselves, also have another level of further backup just in case anything could possibly go wrong,” Hoogesteger says.

“Daniel’s chickens are protected by about four layers of redundancy, so that they’re never without power, because chickens without power means dead chickens – it’s all about protecting the health and wellbeing of those chickens.