The Cluck Stops Here: News from the Coop
Bottom-Line: The birds did just as well with the LED system as with the old kerosene standby, or with a more traditional solar-fluorescent solution that cost six-times more and performed less well in cloudy conditions!
Switching to LEDs pays back in 1.5 years (compared to 9.3 years for solar+fluorescent) and has increased the profitability of the farmer’s business by 15%.
The fieldwork was led by guest blogger Jennifer Tracy, a Lumina Project researcher, recent graduate of the Energy, Environment and Society Masters Program at Humboldt State University and now a consultant to the Lighting Africa Project on off-grid lighting in sub-Saharan Africa. Lighting Africa co-sponsored this study.
Note: Download the full report.
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Like a proud parent, I said farewell to the chickens last week, after going from 2-hour-old fluffy chicks to fully-grown meaty broilers in just 5 weeks. Off to the slaughterhouse they graduated.
Our project was looking at the economics of lighting an off-grid farm in rural Kenya that raises chickens for meat. This type of production traditionally requires lights to be on during the night in order to stimulate growth. Because much of the production happens where there is no electricity grid, some farmers use kerosene lamps in the coops.
This becomes very expensive (and polluting) as one liter of kerosene now costs around $0.80 and one coop which uses 8 lamps consumes about 3 liters per night. That comes to about $80 per coop per 35-day growing cycle. To put things into perspective, the average monthly wage for people living in the same town as the farmer in our study is about $60. So, kerosene is an expensive lighting source. But, an even more potentially profound and impactful finding is that lighting through the night, whatever the source, may not be necessary for growth…at least not throughout the entire 35-day cycle.
The study compared 3 coops with 3 different lighting systems. Both the fluorescent and LED lighting systems were powered by solar (plus some wind backup for the coop served by fluorescent lights). The third coop used kerosene only. The LED system provided more—and more uniformly distributed—light, along with other operational advantages for the farmer.
The chickens didn’t seem to have a preference among the three lighting approaches: or at least they eat the same with each.
On day 14 the clouds settled into Maai Mahiu (where the farm is) and stayed for two weeks. The fluorescent system (built before we came along) turned out to be very much undersized (the solar panel does not make as much energy as is used by the lights), but the LED system is sized so that the lights will work even during extended periods of cloudy weather. On about day 15 the fluorescent lights began going off after a few hours of being on … around 1AM. This pattern continued for much of the remaining days in the cycle. The surprise was to watch the weights of the chickens across the three houses: they increased at near equal rates, regardless of the lighting. Well, it might be the case that a farmer who questions the tradition of leaving the lights on all night may be in a position to save on lighting costs.
The only real difference in outcomes was cost. The undersized fluorescent system had an initial cost of 300,000 Kenya Shillings (about $3,800), while the LED system cost 46,800 KSh (about $590). Over the course of the growth cycle, the fuel-lit coop used about 6,300 KSh of kerosene (about $80/US). So, the LED system would pay for itself in 35 operating weeks (about a year and a half for this producer, who produces 5 “crops” per year), while the fluorescent system would take 240 weeks (9.3 years).
Bottom line: Thanks to kerosene savings, the farmer’s net after-tax revenue increased by 15% with the LED system.
That’s nothing to cluck at!
- Jennifer Tracy
Note: Download the full report.
