What type of solar power system did Serra Farming install to offset their production costs?

At Serra Farms, owned by Joe Serra and his five sons, predominantly bananas and avocados are grown. The bananas are seasonal and are picked, washed, packed, and distributed to wholesalers like Woolworths and Coles. To house these bananas, cold rooms are required, which consume a lot of energy. To tackle this issue, a 100-kilowatt solar system was designed and installed on the farm, made up of 335-watt panels. The system covers the cold rooms, pumps, lighting, and irrigation pumps, and is estimated to save around $90,000 to $105,000 in electricity across the three sites.

With over 400 acres of volcanic land with basalt underground, the challenge was to ground mount the non-invasive system without hitting any large boulders. Utilising short foot design, an Australian invention with no concrete required, the system was installed by ensuring that no large basalt boulders were hit.

Today, we're at Serra Farms and drilling. This is owned by Joe Serra, and his five sons. They have quite a diverse, predominant bananas and avocados, on this particular farm. They have three other farms which are predominantly avocado, with regards to this operation here, with the bananas predominantly. Because it's seasonal, they pick and pack the bananas, they wash them and they distributed to a large wholesalers, typically Woolworths and Coles in the southern states, especially Victoria. And that's got to be housed in cold rooms, which require a lot of energy, there wash bays and drying and then packing.

So the system designed here was a 100 kilowatt solar system, made up of 335 watt panels, fully optimised. And it was so many that we designed and chose, for the customer, which they obviously since gone with. And we've utilised that with the packing shed as well, and the other ground mounts, which has 40 kilowatts on each other sites that they've got. All up on the Serra Farm here, there's 300 kilowatts getting installed. We're right in the midst of it now. We've done 80 kilowatts in the main packing shed, which covers the cold rooms, all their pumps, everything from lighting and cold rooms, and then also down here, the irrigation pumps. There's a 100 kilowatts here as we speak, and they got two other sites, and two other farms for avocados, which are 40 kilowatts each, so all up 300 kilowatts. But I think all up between them, they're looking at potentially saving around about 90, to $105,000 in electricity, amongst the three sites.