If he did any energy consuming processes to aide farming such as drying wheat to harden it and increase market price, or had greenhouses which needed heating, or a dairy adjunct which needed cooling, then his rate of return as cost avoidance and improved profit for the Ag. side could be a lot bigger than the 1c/kW to sell power back.
Basically, heat energy is time shifting be it coolth or warmth. And heat and cool cost money.
Farmers in Oz are using droids to spray and weed, so battery charging could be another cost avoidance.
Or cold store for produce to sell at advantageous prices in winter. Basic arbitrage gains to permit the farm yield to maximise against predictable price variance.
Colorado has rich people. Grow microherbs out of season.
Farms often have a lot of less viable land for primary production. They could deploy flow batteries which have size costs, but massive mwh return and scale very nicely and last a very long time. Even just water pumping shifts energy into storage. Farms are giant machines for converting sunlight and water into produce anyway, this is a good fit: it's the same energy source, shifted.
It also fits well with some ideas from Denmark to find new catalysts to allow intermittent processes to make ammonia from solar power, with the idea that the ammonia when mixed with water can be used as fertiliser.
Solar power + intermittent synthesis methods fits really well together for a less centralised economy.
The simplest way to make nitrogen fertilizer from excess electrical power is by electric discharge to make NOx.
I remember a science museum exhibit of a simple spark device. It was in an enclosed box to prevent gases from escaping, and the air inside was noticeably brown from all the accumulated NO2.
Commercially, a similar process was used for a while a century ago, the Birkeland-Eyde process. It passed air through an arc. It was phased out because it wasn't competitive with the HB process using hydrogen from fossil fuels.
> Even just water pumping shifts energy into storage
Could potentially reuse elevated water tanks? Guess the cost of the pumps might make the savings on the structure very small, and no idea if the amount of energy would be significant to a farm.
As i understand it mostly the best use of pumped water is gravity fed watering for stock, or crops. Pumped hydro is great at dam size scale but the losses exceed battery. What it's got is the sheer gwh scale - snowy 2.0 will run for days and days riding out a dunkelflaut with a lot of gw fed out. 2.2 gw and 150 gwh usable. (They claim more but it's disputed)
I don't think a farm needs that. Better to pump the water to a headstock keeping cow troughs full, or for crop circles.
Not a farmer or an engineer. Happy to be corrected.
Basically, heat energy is time shifting be it coolth or warmth. And heat and cool cost money.
Farmers in Oz are using droids to spray and weed, so battery charging could be another cost avoidance.
Or cold store for produce to sell at advantageous prices in winter. Basic arbitrage gains to permit the farm yield to maximise against predictable price variance.
Colorado has rich people. Grow microherbs out of season.
Farms often have a lot of less viable land for primary production. They could deploy flow batteries which have size costs, but massive mwh return and scale very nicely and last a very long time. Even just water pumping shifts energy into storage. Farms are giant machines for converting sunlight and water into produce anyway, this is a good fit: it's the same energy source, shifted.