Renewable energy investment support, education and tours on farm scale – the Finnish E-farm® concept

The Finnish GREBE project partners Luke and Karelia UAS visited two E-farm® destinations provided by the Finnish E-farm® service using renewable energy solutions for energy production on a farm scale.

A perfect example for an E-farm® destination is the Itikan tila farm in the region of Northern Savo in Finland. The farm produces agricultural products, provides cultural and tourist services and has an own energy production on the farm including an own biodiesel production unit, a wind turbine, solar panels and a ground source heat pump.

The E-farm® service includes site visits to so-called “E-farm® destinations”, support services in form of calculations, education and training.  E-farm® offers for instance dedicated courses on biogas and wind energy. Also, E-farm® provides detailed investment calculations and support for farmers planning to invest in renewable energy solutions on their farm. By contacting the coordinator of E-farm®, customers can order visits or tours to any of the destinations in Finland, ask for support or other offered services at one contact point. Also tours to Central Europe can be organized. Companies behind the trademark are Envitecpolis Oy and Savon Siemen Oy.

The concept of combining conventional (farm) business with energy production and tourism has been presented in the Northern Periphery Programme (NPP) area before, the NPP project REMOTE worked with this idea for example. Besides of the availability of sustainable resources, the Northern Periphery area is unique in regards to the high number of remote dwellings in rural areas, the availability of unique cultural experiences and events for tourists. A large share of buildings has either no access to electricity or is dependent on producing energy from fossil fuels. A focus was to provide feasible solutions for renewable energies in remote areas adapted to the scale of sparsely populated areas and communities by providing information, products and services similar to the E-farm® concept especially dedicated for farms and their customers.

E-farm® has a network of farms across Finland coving a wide range of renewable energy solutions including for example wind mills, small scale CHP units from forest chips, biogas, biodiesel, solar panels, hydro power and ground source heat pump.

In addition to energy sales of renewable energy to the market, visits to the farms provide new business opportunities such as additional income to both the farm and the service and increase the awareness and experiences of energy production investments at farms.

More information on the E-farm® destinations and services offered can be found from the webpage (in Finnish): www.efarm.fi

Sinikasvis – Biomass-based CHP and PV at farm-scale

Sinikasvis is a limited partnership located in Sukeva, Northern Savo. The berry farm has unique energy production system consisting of a biomass –based co-production of heat by Spanner Re² unit and 15 kW PV system.

The Finnish GREBE partners, LUKE and Karelia UAS, visited Sinikasvis for compiling a case study for the GREBE project on biomass-based CHP. The recently invested system, Spanner Re² (30 kW for electricity, 80 kW for heat) is the first of a kind in the region, but has number of references around Europe. The energy consumption (140 000 kWh/a) is highest in winter peak times, but also in late summer as berry farm needs energy for freezers and dryers. The woodchips are high quality (below 10% moisture and even-sized) and produced by the farmer form his own forest.

Sinikasvis is part of the E-farm network demonstrating renewable energy solutions in Finland. The farm is also producer of Farmivirta – Farm Power – concept of Oulun Energia, selling renewable electricity produced by micro- and small-scale producers.

The GREBE project will prepare a case study report about the Sinikasvis farm, which will then be available as good example case for biomass-based CHP solution for the Northern Periphery regions and GREBE partner countries.

More information available at: E-Farm (In Finnish); Spanner Re²; Farmivirta