Rural areas in the United States have under-developed solar power capabilities relative to urban areas due to challenges matching energy demand centers with underutilized land and consequent cost challenges related to smaller installations that lack economies of scale. Aquaculture farming operations are commonly located in regions with high solar intensity, but because traditional daytime energy costs are extremely high in these regions, many industry best practices are not economically feasible. This project addresses these problems by developing bolt-on equipment to augment existing floating aeration systems on fish farms with solar power and variable speed drives. Our innovation will reduce the speed of the aeration paddlewheels during daytime hours to enable circulation and destratification of the pond water layers without releasing oxygen from the supersaturated top layer and will use solar power to avoid the higher daytime power costs from using electricity from the grid. During Phase I of this project, FarmAfield Labs LLC will: 1) Work with industry experts to model power requirements and operating conditions for daytime pond destratification using pre-existing floating aeration paddlewheels; 2) Build a prototype of a complete system to be installed on existing floating aeration equipment; and 3) Use our prototype results to estimate system sizing, capital requirements, and payback periods for typical fish farms. By enabling a cost-effective way for fish producers to run daytime circulators on their farms, our innovation will facilitate significant nighttime aeration energy cost savings. Furthermore, our innovation will enable a much more in-depth study of the productivity and growth efficiency improvements that result from proper destratification methods. While we believe the energy cost savings alone make this a commercially viable innovation, these secondary benefits hold the potential to boost production capabilities of fish farms around the world.
