Solar Heating Services for Agricultural Customers

Solar energy can supply and/or supplement energy for many agricultural needs and offers great savings.

We can use the heat from the walls and roof of existing buildings to deliver low cost heat. Our systems also have a special advantage in the agricultural market because they can be temporarily ground-mounted. Agricultural customers can deploy our heating systems when and where they need them, move them to other locations as the seasonal needs change, and store them when they no longer need the heat.

Customers can use our ground-mounted systems for:

• Heating Greenhouses
• Heating Barns and Poultry Houses
• Drying Crops and Grains
• Drying Sludge
• Heating Water and Digesters
• And more

Solar Heating for Greenhouses

Many commercial greenhouses rely on the sun for their daytime heating needs, but must use expensive propane or heating oil for night time heating. These fuels are expensive during the coldest months when operating on a year-round production schedule or getting an early start to spring planting.

Our solar greenhouse retrofits utilize solar energy for heating. Our designs use the greenhouse’s solar envelope and low-cost collectors to collect and store solar heat energy for use during the night and on cloudy days.

We can also provide ground-mounted or elevated systems that store heat in the ground to further augment the greenhouses heating supply.

Solar Heating for Crop and Grain Drying

Farms have used the sun to dry crops and grain for centuries. This is one of the oldest and most widely used applications of solar energy. The simplest and least expensive technique lets the crops dry naturally in the field or spreads grain and fruit out in the sun after harvesting. The disadvantage of these methods is that the crops and grain are subject to damage by birds, rodents, wind, rain, and contamination by windblown dust and dirt.

More sophisticated solar dryers protect grain and fruit, reduce losses, dry faster and more uniformly, and produce a better quality product than open-air methods. When agricultural customers use a metal shed for drying, our system can take heat from the sides of the shed and speed up the drying process. Our team can also design heat-storage components to provide heat when daylight is not available.

Solar Space Heating and Water Heating for Barns and Poultry Houses

Livestock and dairy operations need a lot of heated air and water. Modern pig and poultry farms raise animals in enclosed buildings. To maximize the health and growth of animals, farms must carefully control temperature and air quality of animal barns. These facilities need to replace the indoor air regularly to remove moisture, toxic gases, odors, and dust. Cold fresh air improves air quality but costs money in terms of animal growth, feed consumption, and delayed time to market.

Warmer fresh air means:

• faster growth
• better feed conversion
• shorter time to market
• and more profit.

Heating this air requires large amounts of energy. We design systems to take heat from the barn or house metal roofing and/or siding to preheat incoming fresh air. These systems can also increase natural ventilation levels during summer months. With a simple air-to-water heat exchanger this incoming flow of hot air can also heat water for animal health and sanitation.

We can design the systems to simply store the heat in the ground or water tanks to supply heat when daylight is not available.

Solar heat options for agriculture

Agricultural customers use American Solar's building integrated solar roofing and siding systems and ground mounted systems.