Summary

The Bamisch farm is located in Plombières in the Liège region of Belgium, close to the German and Dutch borders, and has 900 livestock units of dairy cattle and 260 ha of utilised agricultural land. To take advantage of the new technologies for producing renewable energy from manure, the farm owner decided to invest in a biogas plant.

EAFRD and regional financial support helped the farm to set up a biogas unit of 33 kW. The plant pumps on a daily basis a fixed quantity of manure from the reactor to the digestate storage and replenishes the discharged volume with fresh manure from the manure pit. Though the process is fully automated, the farmer can supervise via a smart phone application.

Results

The main achievement is the use of green energy for electricity on the farm, mainly during the milking process, which is fully automated, and is highly energy consuming.

After two years of use the farm is only half heated by the biogas plant. The farmer hasn’t been able to use renewable energy to heat the milking area due to technical problems and ongoing adjustments to the system.