Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 22 ISSUE 3
Written by Mihai MIHĂILESCU, Liviu MĂRCUȚĂ, Eduard CEAUȘOGLU

Energy management is important for all farms and choosing the most suitable form of storing energy is essential in mitigating associated risks, seizing opportunities and thus maximizing productivity. We propose the small scale environmentally friendly method of storing energy in gravitational form, which involves pumping water available in open ponds to higher altitudes to store surplus energy, and releasing it to lower altitudes when additional energy is required. For small farms that benefit of suitable geographical position for storing energy this way, i.e. sufficiently high height gradient, this method would be particularly beneficial as it decreases the need to rely on external energy providers. In addition, it has the potential of helping the environment, as local flora and fauna may benefit from the presence of water especially during drought periods. For the purpose of remote control and data acquisition in such locations, we propose using long range and low power communication (LoRa) infrastructure and LoraWAN protocol - such infrastructure has the added benefit of assisting farmers in making better decisions for their crops, as well as providing warnings if required. To assess the feasibility of the method, we carried out a case study on a local small farm. Initial results indicate that the costs involved when using this method are comparable to other energy storage methods, but storing energy gravitationally has the added advantage of being more environmentally friendly. For a more detailed and larger scale feasibility test, we propose to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) for choosing the most suitable locations for placing the ponds and Machine Learning (ML) techniques to examine correlations and draw a conclusion on whether the presence of new ponds is overall beneficial. Such an investigation also offers insight from a quantitative perspective, informing economic calculations such as pay-back period (PBP) and Return on Investment (ROI) of the project.

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