Eco Eye

PoorFarmer

Anyone watching Duncan Stewart and his take on Anaerobic Digesters? He makes it all sound like such a simple solution. Cut down on cattle, grow grass to create gas and save the world

Bullocks

PoorFarmer wrote: »

Anyone watching Duncan Stewart and his take on Anaerobic Digesters? He makes it all sound like such a simple solution. Cut down on cattle, grow grass to create gas and save the world

I have one eye on it here .I wonder why our govt isn't subsidising the power the same as northern Ireland ?
He mentioned 30 euros a tonne for silage , what kind of quality is needed for it ?

PoorFarmer

What would interest me is the quality of silage or grass required to feed the digester. Would it only suit those in good quality land that can produce quality silage or would poorer quality grass/rushes produce similar amounts of gas per weight harvested.
Bloody government isnt likely to pay anything extra on the gas produced. Would rather send it to Brussels in fines than look at the longer game and actually be pro-active

wrangler

Bullocks wrote: »

I have one eye on it here .I wonder why our govt isn't subsidising the power the same as northern Ireland ?
He mentioned 30 euros a tonne for silage , what kind of quality is needed for it ?

subsidies in northern Ireland were a scam and cost britain a lot more than they intended to spend and seemingly they can't get out of it now......farmers and householders got massive grants to equip themselves, dairyfarmers around the border can't compete for grass because of teh prices available, so it's unlikely to be made available here

Keep Sluicing

The government are putting a tarrif in place for large biomethane injection AD plants. Itll probably end up that you coukd produce silage for these large scale AD plants and have a better return than every agri sector orther than dairy. But in my own opinion, these plant are the opposite of what they are suppose to be. Which is a source of energy generation for farm or general waste.

The Rhi in Northern Ireland was a scam, but had nothing to do with AD plants. AD is actually costing about 6% to 7% more than was expected, so its not bad. They waited untill they had allocated all the money and cut the tarrif for new entrants after that date. If you weren't in by March 2017 , you didn't get to build a plant.

Wrangler, the majority of non dairy farmers are happy to be able to compete, and even out bid dairy farmers for land in Northern Ireland now, as they were sick of being outbid by them in the past. The dairy farmer doesnt have a devine right to be the top of the farming food chain.

Birdnuts

PoorFarmer wrote: »

Anyone watching Duncan Stewart and his take on Anaerobic Digesters? He makes it all sound like such a simple solution. Cut down on cattle, grow grass to create gas and save the world

Stewart reminds me of Eamon Ryan ie. pretty clueless when it comes to assessing the real environmental and economic costs of so-called "Green Energies". Producing gas from grass has all the environmental merits of many so-called biofuels like Palm oil. Digesters should be about processing waste agri-material like slurry, proccessed food waste etc. not competing with food crops/stock, wildlife etc. for land and therefore making a bad situation worse!!.

Base price

A friend was telling me land that he lost land that he used to rent for silage in NCD. A Northern outfit planted it with maize for to feed an anaerobic digester. The brought their own equipment to harvest and transport it back to the North. The land is a few miles from the M1.
There must be good money in it if they are able to carry the costs of transporting it from near Swords to the North.

I says

Base price wrote: »

A friend was telling me land that he lost land that he used to rent for silage in NCD. A Northern outfit planted it with maize for to feed an anaerobic digester. The brought their own equipment to harvest and transport it back to the North. The land is a few miles from the M1.
There must be good money in it if they are able to carry the costs of transporting it from near Swords to the North.

Planters

Eh.

Capercaillie

Bullocks wrote: »

I have one eye on it here .I wonder why our govt isn't subsidising the power the same as northern Ireland ?
He mentioned 30 euros a tonne for silage , what kind of quality is needed for it ?

Silage plus slurry as well?

Water John

Studied this 20 years ago but we have hardly moved on it since. The first focus should be on AD for slurry and waste. Anywhere animals are kept in most of the year providing regular feedstock.
Putting it as grass for AD or animals missed the point IWT.
We are falling far behind on renewable energy. AD has the extra advantage as a renewable in that it can be stored for some time. So it can always be used to provide peak electricity.