Public Policy Center
 Audio/Video
Alternative Lighting for Poultry Farms
(3 minutes: 30 seconds)
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Audio/Video Script:
[Slide -
Alternative Lighting for Poultry Farms]
[Narrator] [Pictures of chickens in a poultry house, poultry
house lighting, and LED - light emitting diode light bulb.] The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture is
experimenting with Arkansas poultry producers to develop less
expensive, more energy efficient lighting for the poultry production
industry. A pilot program, funded by a grant, from the Arkansas
Economic Development Commission's Energy Office have allowed light
emitting diodes, or LEDs to be installed in several commercial
poultry houses in Northwest Arkansas to determine potential cost
savings. The project was funded by the Federal American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act [Logo - Recovery.gov] and administered though the Arkansas Economic
Development Commission's Energy Office [Logo].
[Jerry Hutton, Hutton Farms] Well, I was contacted by Dr. Goodwin, and he asked me if I'd like
to participate in a pilot project using LED lighting, I called my
poultry company and visited with them and they agreed and so we put
the LED lights in here with the idea of seeing what kind of
electrical cost savings that we could come up with. [Picture of
LED lighting inside a poultry house.]
[Jerry Hutton] Well first of all, we've participated on lots of pilot projects
on this farm because of the different things I've been involved in
public service. So when they came to me and asked me to do this it
was just a natural to say yes. Because all of us poultry farmers are
looking for ways to cut our expenses. [Pictures of poultry houses,
generators, chickens, poultry house fans, lighting inside a poultry
house, and an electrical panel.] You know, we have our interest
costs, our mortgages on these houses. We have in my case natural gas
costs, we have even the bedding costs. So many of these things, we
don't have any control over. So if we can come up with some ways to
actually reduce the amount of electricity, and I'm waiting to see
what that, you know, is going to look like because we don't really
have a history of a separation of what is lighting costs versus what
does the fans cost. [Jerry Hutton] But I think that when the pilot project is
completed they'll have a good idea what portion of our bill is
lighting and then what savings that is going to produce for us and
then that'll give us an opportunity to make decisions about future
lighting investments here on these farms.
[Pictures of feed storage bins veing filled from a tanker truck,
light bulbs, poultry houses, and chickens inside a poultry house.] Well we currently have eight houses in production, and of those
eight we have four that's been switched over to LED lighting. So
we're going to have four that's going to have incandescent lighting
so we'll be able to also see how the birds do over here versus the
old traditional way. These houses are five-hundred foot long and
there's a light bulb about every ten-foot so about fifty light bulbs
on the grow out, there's also lighting in the center, that we keep
on, brood lights that we keep on for the first ten days or so when
they're little. We also use those lights to be able to see what
we're doing when we're cleaning the chicken house and doing
maintenance to the chicken house. So there's an additional
thirty-five or so of those lights.
[Jerry Hutton] And if we can find ways of being either neutral or actually make
a little bit of money and reduce energy needs at the same time I
think an awful lot of farmer's are going to participate.
[Announcer] [Slide - Energy Efficiency Arkansas] The following was brought to
you by the Arkansas Energy Office [logo], the University of Arkansas Division of
Agriculture’s Public Policy Center [logo].
To learn more about sustainable, cutting edge and renewable energy
alternatives in Arkansas, go to
www.arkansasenergy.org or ppc.uaex.edu.
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