Cow manure management can be costly and problematic for dairy farmers, but for 18 South Coast producers it is now the key to providing them with free electricity, water and fertiliser.
Sydney-based company Innovating Energy will work with dairy farmers in the Nowra region to build a biogas plant to produce electricity through cow manure.
The project will form a feasibility study into waste-to-energy and is one of 17 studies into microgrids to be funded by the Australia government through the Regional and Remote Communities Reliability Fund.
The studies will look at whether establishing a microgrid, or upgrading existing off-grid technologies, would better meet the electricity supply needs of regional communities.
Innovating Energy have been given $3 million to build a large-scale Renewable Energy Biogas Power Generation Plant.
Although biogas has been around for close to 30 years, Innovating Energy Managing Director David Ryan said the unique aspect of their plan was the linking of the 18 farms involved through a pump system, the design a world first.
"We'll capture the manure from each farm and then pump it back to one farm, where the biogas equipment will sit, and then connect back into the grid," Mr Ryan explained.
He said the manure would be processed through digesters, which capture the methane gas.
The digester would discharge purified water, to be pumped back for the farmers' use, along with residual solids to be spread as fertiliser.
Electricity produced would be run through a generator and connected to the grid.
"It will provide the farmers with free electricity, a fertiliser that they can re-use and give them purified water."
Mr Ryan said each farmer would get back an amount of energy which was relative to the amount of cows they had and therefore manure they produced. The company will then sell the excess energy to retail customers.
Dairy farmer Tim Cochrane has signed up to the project. Mr Cochrane said the biggest benefit for them would be the manure being dealt with off-site.
"The energy return back to the farm will be very helpful in the running of our business, but it's the effluent management which is the big win for us," he said.
At the moment the effluent needs to be stored in dams that have to be cleaned out and irrigated.
Mr Cochrane said the biogas plant would also reduce their carbon footprint, with the methane gas released by the cattle converted to green energy, while any future environmental restrictions on effluent management would not impact their business.
The biogas plant will be built over a 12-14-month period once approvals have been finalised.