OT_204: EECA Technology Demonstration project lists, NZ milk-chilling demo results (2024)

OT_204: EECA Technology Demonstration project lists, NZ milk-chilling demo results (2024)

Source

https://www.eeca.govt.nz/co-funding-and-support/products/technology-demonstration/ — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)

EECA Technology Demonstration project lists: NZ milk-chilling demonstration results

Real-world NZ milk-chilling energy demonstrations, verified against both EECA PDFs

The Technology Demonstration Fund co-funded several on-farm milk-cooling upgrades and published per-project estimated annual electricity savings. Variable-speed chilling (Vari-Cool 22/36) and ice-bank snap-chill with full heat recovery each cut chiller energy materially: Rylib Dairies −28% kWh per kg milksolids, saving 31,424 kWh/yr; Inniskillen 24,090 kWh/yr with milk leaving site at an average 5 °C; Sullivan Farm’s Snapchill ice-bank saved ~12,000 kWh/yr while dropping milk from ~18 °C to 4–5 °C and shifting load to off-peak. ⚠ These are illustrative per-farm savings deltas, not absolute per-cow or per-litre milk-cooling loads, and not per-cow benchmarks. Use them to bound the efficiency gain of a chilling upgrade, not to size a baseline cooling load (that comes from the sibling dairy-shed primaries).

Summary

Two published EECA (Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority) lists of Technology Demonstration Fund projects, downloaded as authoritative PDFs. ot_204_projects.pdf (“Technology Demonstration Projects”, January 2024) gives each project a Results narrative plus estimated annual CO2 reduction, estimated energy savings (kWh) and EECA co-funding. ot_204_fund-list.pdf (“Technology Demonstration Fund — Project list”) is the fuller project inventory: applicant, location, project description, contracted financial year, co-funding paid, and an energy-savings column.

The Neobiome-relevant subset is the on-farm milk-chilling demonstrations: three Vari-Cool variable-speed milk chillers (Rylib Dairies and Inniskillen, both Vari-Cool 22; Meddo Farms, Vari-Cool 36), one Snapchill ice-bank with full heat recovery (Sullivan Farm), and one 2024/25 milk-chiller-plus-battery pairing (Fairbank Farms). These are real NZ deployments with EECA-estimated annual electricity savings relative to the prior refrigeration setup, so they characterise the efficiency delta of a milk-cooling upgrade rather than the absolute cooling load. They are useful as sanity-check anchors and as evidence that ice-bank chilling can shift cooling load off-peak (avoiding line upgrades) and reach the ~4–5 °C milk-storage compliance target.

Key claims

- claim: "RYLIB DAIRIES (Vari-Cool 22 milk chiller): estimated annual energy saving 31,424 kWh; estimated annual CO2 reduction 4 tonnes; EECA co-funding $29,000. Results VERBATIM: 'There is a very clear efficiency gain over a normal refrigeration unit plus it is 100% electric element water heating. This project saw a reduction of 28% in kW units per kg/MS on the previous year.' (i.e. −28% kWh per kg milksolids vs the previous year.)"
  source_location: "ot_204_projects.pdf p.1, 'Primary, secondary and manufacturing sectors' table, 'Rylib Dairies Limited' row (financial year listed 2015/16). Savings + co-funding cross-confirmed in ot_204_fund-list.pdf p.6, 'Rylib Dairies Limited', Christchurch (financial year there listed 2014/15): '$29,000 / 31,424'."
- claim: "INNISKILLEN DAIRY (Vari-Cool 22 milk chiller): estimated annual energy saving 24,090 kWh; estimated annual CO2 reduction 3 tonnes; EECA co-funding $29,500. Results VERBATIM: 'There is a very clear efficiency gain over a normal refrigeration unit plus it is 100% electric element water heating. Milk is leaving site at an average of 5 degrees each day making the farm now fully compliant with even the strictest milk chilling standards in the world.' ⚠ Inter-document discrepancy: the fund-list PDF states 24,089 kWh for the same project (a 1-unit difference); cite the projects-PDF value 24,090 and note it."
  source_location: "ot_204_projects.pdf p.1, 'Primary, secondary and manufacturing sectors' table, 'Inniskillen Dairy' row (2015/16) = 24,090 kWh. Discrepant restatement in ot_204_fund-list.pdf p.6, 'Inniskillen Dairy', Culverden (2014/15) = 24,089."
- claim: "SULLIVAN FARM (Snapchill ice-bank milk snap-chilling unit with full heat recovery): estimated annual energy saving 12,000 kWh; estimated annual CO2 reduction 5 tonnes; EECA co-funding $14,625. Fund-list description VERBATIM: 'Use of an ice bank milk snap chilling system until [sic — 'unit'] with full heat recovery to reduce milk temperature from ~18° to 4-5°.' Projects-PDF Results VERBATIM: 'The Snapchill system installed was successful and can use off-peak electricity overnight to produce the ice bank meaning it uses lower cost electricity and, in some cases, there is no need to upgrade the electricity lines into the farm. It is estimated that this Snapchill system could be used in over 1,000 farms.'"
  source_location: "ot_204_projects.pdf p.1, 'Sullivan Farm Snapchill' row (financial year 2018/19). Description + milk-temperature detail (~18° to 4-5°) from ot_204_fund-list.pdf p.4, 'Sullivan Farm', Taranaki (financial year there listed 2017/18)."
- claim: "MEDDO FARMS (Vari-Cool 36 milk chiller): estimated annual energy saving 41,553 kWh; EECA co-funding $29,000. This is the third Vari-Cool demonstration on the lists and the only Vari-Cool 36 (larger unit) — it appears in the fund-list inventory only, with no Results narrative in the projects PDF."
  source_location: "ot_204_fund-list.pdf p.6, 'Meddo Farms Ltd', Waitoa (financial year 2014/15): 'Demonstration of a Vari-Cool 36 milk chilling system. $29,000 / 41,553'."
- claim: "FAIRBANK FARMS (2024/25): 'Installation of a 50kW milk chiller and a 50kW/100kWh battery energy storage system.' EECA co-funding $70,000; energy savings not yet available ('-'). A milk-chiller-plus-battery pairing — pairs a cooling load with on-site storage — but no measured savings figure is published yet."
  source_location: "ot_204_fund-list.pdf p.3, 'Fairbank Farms', Southland, financial year 2024/25. Savings column shows '-' (figures not yet available per the '**Figures not yet available' footnote)."

Neobiome Intelligence relevance

Feeds d01_renewable_energy_storage as illustrative NZ milk-cooling energy evidence — a dairy-shed electricity load/demand item the community energy system must serve (filed with the other energy-domain demand datasets, the EECA sets RD_007 / OT_028 / RD_008).

What this source establishes for the NI energy model:

• Order-of-magnitude milk-chilling savings from a modern efficient chiller: roughly 24,000–42,000 kWh/yr per farm for Vari-Cool variable-speed units and ~12,000 kWh/yr for a Snapchill ice-bank with heat recovery. Because these are savings deltas (against the prior refrigeration setup), they bound the efficiency improvement, not the absolute cooling load.
• Load-shifting / grid-constraint relevance (d01): the Snapchill ice-bank charges on off-peak electricity overnight and, per EECA, “in some cases, there is no need to upgrade the electricity lines into the farm” — a concrete demonstration that thermal storage (ice bank) can defer distribution upgrades in constrained rural networks. Fairbank Farms’ 50 kW chiller + 50 kW/100 kWh battery (2024/25) is the storage-paired extension of the same idea.
• Compliance target: milk brought to ~4–5 °C (Inniskillen “average 5 degrees”; Sullivan “~18° to 4-5°”), consistent with NZ milk-chilling requirements — cross-references the NZ cooling-design code (MPI NZCP1).

Limitation for modelling (do not overstate): these are per-farm demonstration savings, not per-cow or per-litre milk-cooling loads, and not per-cow benchmarks. The absolute on-farm cooling/electricity load (kWh per cow or per litre) comes from the sibling dairy-shed primaries (the CAENZ Southland load-breakdown primary, the Marshall-Tate dairy-shed thesis, and the NZ dairy-shed electricity-benchmarks compiled research). Use this source to characterise the savings achievable, and those siblings to size the baseline.

Notes

• Authoritative EECA downloads. data_quality: verified: published EECA figures, and every milk-chilling figure was cross-checked between the two PDFs (and inter-document discrepancies recorded below).
• Multi-file source. Two PDFs in one subfolder: ot_204_projects.pdf (Technology Demonstration Projects, Jan 2024 — the Results-narrative document; the PRIMARY, sha256 in frontmatter) and ot_204_fund-list.pdf (Technology Demonstration Fund — Project list — the co-funding + energy-savings inventory). source_path points at the primary file inside the page-stem subfolder.
• Inter-document discrepancies (recorded):
  1. Inniskillen energy saving: 24,090 kWh (projects PDF) vs 24,089 kWh (fund-list PDF) — a 1-unit difference. Cited value = 24,090 (projects PDF).
  2. Financial year labels differ between the two PDFs: Rylib and Inniskillen are listed 2015/16 in the projects PDF but 2014/15 in the fund-list; Sullivan Farm is 2018/19 (projects) vs 2017/18 (fund-list). The projects PDF is a January-2024 snapshot; treat the fund-list contracted-year as the funding-contract year. Not material to the energy figures.
  3. Fund-list energy-savings column is header-labelled “(kW)” but the values are annual kWh (they match the projects PDF’s explicit “Estimated Energy Savings (kWh)” and the column footnote “**Figures not yet available”; the page total 101,160,479 is kWh-scale). Treat the fund-list “(kW)” header as a mislabel for kWh.
• Savings ≠ consumption. Every figure is an estimated annual saving relative to the prior setup, not the absolute energy the chiller uses. This is the single most important caveat when wiring any of these numbers into the model.

Research targets

Documents to retrieve

None. Both EECA lists are fully captured here; the milk-chilling subset is the model-relevant part and is transcribed above.

Research gaps

• No new RT opened. The one genuine model gap this source exposes — an absolute on-farm milk-cooling load (kWh per cow or per litre) rather than a savings delta — is already addressed by the sibling dairy-shed primaries (the CAENZ Southland dairy-energy load-breakdown primary and the Marshall-Tate dairy-shed thesis, anchoring the NZ dairy-shed electricity-benchmarks compiled research). Recorded here as a cross-reference rather than a new backlog entry.

Connections

Links to

Sources (3): OT_028 · RD_007 · RD_008

Referenced by

EDT domains (1): D01: Renewable Energy & Storage Systems

Sources (1): CR_057