Wind and Solar Pump the Water

Dan Miller
By  Dan Miller , Progressive Farmer Senior Editor
(Progressive Farmer photo by Dan Miller)

Gerald Haines wanted to improve the grazing offered to his 40-cow commercial Angus heard. He has built pasture quality while installing a conservation plan to protect the water around his farm and the Chesapeake Bay watershed.


Water Access. Central to Haines’ effort was giving his cattle better access to good supplies of water. Haines had earlier fenced his cattle out of the creeks flowing from his land into the nearby James River.


Working with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Farm Service Agency and the Robert E. Lee Soil and Water Conservation District, he set out to deliver well water across his entire farm through strings of water troughs. The idea was to place enough troughs across the farm to keep Haines’ cattle within 200 yards from any one water source.


It took a bit of planning—and trial and error—to get there.


Haines, who grew up on the urban streets of Detroit, has long raised commercial cattle with his brother, Robert—first, in Michigan, and today, in Amherst County, Va. It would be hard to find a prettier place for a cattle farm. Haines compares it to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.


From the high pastures on Haines’ 855-acre farm, Appomattox (where, in April 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant) is visible in the distance. The grass up there fades into heavily timbered ridges that rise into the Blue Ridge Mountains. At the far end of the farm, a boot-shaped pasture marks the edge of a quarter-mile-long bluff. It overlooks a hayfield, and beyond that is the James River.


It has been more than 400 years since the first European settlers paddled up the James from Hampton Roads, on Chesapeake Bay. Today, these are highly protected waters coveted by fishermen casting for the swift strike of smallmouth bass.


One Good Well. The pasture atop the James River bluff holds a prized piece of infrastructure. A 256-foot-deep well and an electric pump provide water to several of Haines’ pastures. Up on the hilltop pastures, however, there are no springs, and the nearest utility pole is a long way off. Haines considered running power to those hilltops to operate a second well. But the $40,000 estimate for the electrical line quickly put the brakes on that idea.


A bit of innovative engineering ultimately provided an answer. Digging a second well atop the highest hill was not too much of a chore. The drilling rig hit good water at 206 feet. Flowing at 3 gallons per minute, the water spilled into two 1,500-gallon underground storage tanks and, from the tanks, out to four ball waterers. Both tanks are buried to keep the water from freezing in the winter.


The challenge was designing the pumping system. Haines and his partners at USDA considered a solar-powered pumping system. They soon grew concerned it would not provide enough lift to bring water out of the well.

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“We just couldn’t find anyone to do it at that time and guarantee it,” explains Don Yancey, the Rustburg, Va., area district conservationist with the NRCS.


Power In The Wind. Discarding the solar idea, the group settled on a Texas-made windmill. And, for the most part, it worked. The well was 161 feet above and 4,000 feet of pipe away from the final trough in a line of four troughs. Gravity creates enough water pressure to push water through the entire system, even though the final trough rests well above the trough before it.


Haines initially doubted the system would work. “How could it create enough pressure to push water up a hill?” he asked the engineers. They assured him it would work well, and it did.


The storage tanks have the capacity to hold enough water to meet the demand for three days. On average, the cattle drink 950 gallons a day. Hot weather revealed a chink in the system.


“Wind speed in this part of the state is not always high enough to provide all the water needed in the summer months,” Yancey says. It takes only 3 mph of wind to turn the windmill. But windless days are maddeningly common on the hottest summer days here, the very days when demand for water peaks.


“The cattle were drinking the water faster than the windmill could fill the tanks,” Haines says. “The windmill did turn, but not enough. There was soon no water in the troughs.”


The solar panel idea was resurrected. A panel, more efficient than those first considered, was installed next to the windmill. The panel charges a series of four car batteries, enough to run the solar pump for up to five days. When the storage tanks are full, a float switch deactivates the solar-powered pump. Excess water pumped by the windmill is diverted back into the well. No water is wasted.


Old Meets New. It’s a smart combination of technologies—the windmill is a proven idea with more than a century of thought behind it, while the solar panel inhabits the cutting edge of alternative energy production.


Altogether, the well, windmill, solar panel, pumps, water lines, fencing and troughs cost $50,000. USDA and state programs paid 75% of that.


“Mr. Haines has a hybrid alternative energy system,” Yancey says. “It utilizes the windmill most of the time with an added solar pump to complement the windmill when wind speeds are very low.”


Haines and his brother are happy with the system. “We’ve been surprised by how quickly the cattle adapted to the entire system, especially the drinking troughs,” Haines says. “Now, we can concentrate on renovating the pastures and move toward intensive grazing.


“Perhaps,” he joked, sort of, “we can actually make a little profit.” â¦�

A Solar Update:

Gerald Haines installed his cattle-watering system prior to the 2011 earthquake that struck the Virginia area. As we finished the story for this issue, he sent another note describing how the quake affected the original design of the project.


“The windmill and solar panels worked well for about three months supplying the back pastures with drinking water for the cattle,” he writes. “Then, we had the earthquake in 2011. The center of the quake was about 200 miles from the farm.


“As you may recall, the quake seriously damaged the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. For us, it cracked the well basin. The water level dropped nearly 90 feet. We quickly ran out of water for the cattle.


“The only option left for us was to drill another well. We asked NRCS [Natural Resources Conservation Service] for help in locating the new well [that] could still connect into the old gravity feed system. They came out and decided the new project was doable. They would pay about a third of the cost of a new well located about 300 yards down from the old one.


“So we pumped the new water uphill to the old holding tanks and then [into] the gravity feed system to supply water to the back pastures. The windmill would act as a small backup. We bit the bullet and installed the new well and piping. So far so good.


“Unfortunately, the old solar panels would not supply enough power to keep the reservoir tanks full. We added another solar panel to the system. After much trial and error, we got the right combination.


“The cattle were in the back pastures all winter with no problems. The new system allows us to add 10 new cow/calf units to the farm with rotational grazing. With the high prices for calves this year, we might break even in the near future.”

(BAS)

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Dan Miller