Farmers are the real ‘super power’ in quest for renewable energy

Mike spent 12 years in Sydney building tech startups before a successful sale prompted him to move back to New Zealand in 2019. He and his wife started Forest Lodge Orchard, planting 9,300 cherry trees on nine hectares in Central Otago.

The journey to electrification began when they discovered that the cherry trees sequestered only 3.8t/yr of carbon, but the diesel machines they used in the orchard emitted 32t/yr. Mike revealed the results of the past five years at evoke^AG. 2025.

We started to look at whether there was an electric option available for all the machines needed to run a productive cherry orchard.

Today the 21 electric machines used across our farm and home at Forest Lodge save 50t in emissions and more importantly, we save $NZ40,000/yr on energy costs. The payback is under 13 years, and we save 32t of CO₂ in the orchard.

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Some of our favourite machines on the farm are:

• Frost fighting fans – imported from South Africa. These pull warm air down from the atmosphere and mix it around the orchard to bring the average temperature up. They cost $9/hr to run. Previous models burned 30-40L/hr of diesel costing hundreds of dollars per hour. These two 30kW fans cost $171,885, imported with the assistance of a grant from Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA).
• Monarch tractor – the world’s first commercial electric tractor, built in California, and the first in NZ. We flew to San Francisco to convince the makers to send us one, and it was the 66^th model made and the first to be exported. It was a revelation. It costs about $2/hr to run, and the diesel equivalent might be up around $15/hr.
• Electric sprayer – the challenge was range, to hold the charge for long enough, as it takes 10 hours to spray the orchard. Traditional foliage sprayers run off the PTO and are very energy intensive. We invented an electric sprayer that runs off a 32 amp caravan plug on the back of the tractor, not the PTO. We think it’s the first in the world.

Other electric options chosen for this bottom-up climate action include two irrigation pumps, golf carts, a lawnmower, forklift, ute and car, as well as a hot water heat pump and induction cooktop in the home, and solar and batteries.

Where the numbers really stacked up was when we started using energy that we created ourselves from solar panels, which more than halved our energy costs.

In the last three years we have had probably 12-14,000 farmers come to our farm to learn about how we have electrified everything. One of the myths that farmers bring is that electric vehicles are great for the city but not great for people in the country.

This could not be further from the truth.

The more kilometres you drive an electric vehicle, the more money you will save. To put it in perspective, in NZ it’s about $NZ3/L for petrol, but if you run these cars off the NZ grid it’s the equivalent of about 60c/L, and if we were able to run it off our own solar system it’s down to about 30c/L.

Farms are going to become the future power plants of the world, here and globally.

This year we will not only save $NZ50,000 on diesel, we will create $NZ40,000 worth of power, and access a further revenue stream by feeding electricity back into the grid.

At peak response we can generate power for 25 homes, exporting 200MWh @ 17c/kWh, which equals $34,000.

Typically, in New Zealand we are paying 0.34c/kWh for power, while Australia pays around 40c/kWh. Installing solar panels costs 7c/kWh.

About 25% of New Zealand’s gross emissions come from 10 million small fossil fuel machines, and the technology exists to replace them today. And in many cases the economics already stacks up to do so.

Farmers are the real superpower. If we do what I’ve done on the 50,000 farms in NZ, we will generate another 60% of renewable energy for the country’s electricity system.

It’s pretty remarkable.