Hafod Renewables is providing heat generated by green energy to a North Wales hill farmer to keep 16,000 chickens happy and laying eggs.
Llyr Jones farms 650 hectares of land in the hills near Llanfihangel Glyn Myfyr and is now using underfloor heating from energy stored in the earth to keep his hen house warm in winter.
Hafod Renewables has laid over 2000 metres of pipe to carry water heated by the soil to warm a giant henhouse to 18 degrees Celsius.
The £55,000 advanced ground source system will keep the hens toasty and performing at their best, even when winter temperatures in the hills plunge well below freezing.
Hafod Renewables managing director David Jones said: “It’s a 60kW system which would be big enough to heat five homes and renewables make a lot of sense for farmers.
“They have the land for ground-source schemes like this and they have the roof area on their barns and buildings for solar power.
“As the price of electricity goes up it is becoming more and more attractive and economic for them to future-proof their energy needs like this.
“Thanks to the feed-in tariff Llyr will have paid for the ground-source system in seven years which will give him a guaranteed 13 years of free power.”
Jones said: “I need the hens to be happy and warm at 18C so that they use all their energy to lay larger eggs – if they’re cold then they use that energy to warm themselves up.
“When the hens arrive here they’re 16 weeks old and it’s vital that at that crucial stage they are happy and warm so they can put all their energy into growth and laying bigger, better and more eggs.
“I keep records and they show that hens that are underweight when they arrive put on that weight within a week now – at that stage every gram they put on is vital.
“When the hens are happy they produce more eggs and it makes the bank manager happy, that makes my wife happy and that makes me happy.”
He is now in his second year keeping free-range hens. It cost him £600,000 to set up the business and the 15,000 eggs his hens lay every day are picked up twice a week by supermarket chain Tesco.
Jones set up Hafod Renewables in 2010 and now employs nine staff, installing solar, air and ground-source heating and biomass projects.
Earlier this year, the company was crowned Wales’s Renewable Heating Installer of the Year.