Chicken coops plans

Commercial lighting businesses like NextGen Illumination Inc. of Fayetteville and Luma Vue of Rogers are turning to the poultry industry for increased sales of their energysaving light bulbs.

Scot Hundley, chief operating officer of Luma Vue, said adoption of light-emitting diode (LED) technology

by Arkansas poultry farmers is being encouraged by $1.6 million in earmarked stimulus dollars.

Dimmable LED bulbs being tested in poultry houses operated by the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture will be bought next year through the Advanced Lighting Technology for Poultry Growers grant – part of a larger $39 million state energy program grant through the federal stimulus program.

The bulbs promise a 76 percent cost reduction in the average grower’s lighting bill compared with incandescent bulbs. A select group of poultry farmers will receive an unknown number of bulbs for free in the coming year.

The UA Division of Agriculture-led effort is designed to help the state’s poultry farmers, and their corporate sponsors, achieve lower production costs, according to a news release from the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.

But before any decision about LED bulb vendors will be made, the testing continues.

LEDs are the latest lighting technology being studied at the UA Applied Broiler Research Farm in Savoy.

Light-emitting diodes are semiconductor chips that directly convert electricity into light, the color of which can depend on the material used to make the bulb.

Tom Tabler, manager of the UA Division of Agriculture’s research farm, said all of the lighting products tested at the farm in the last three years have proved to be more energy efficient than incandescents.

He has recently overseen the installation of cold cathode lamps and compact fluorescent light bulbs inside four specially wired chicken houses that serve as a laboratory.

“The environment in a chicken house is harsh,” Tabler said. “There’s a lot of moisture, dust and ammonia and all of those things affect how long the bulb will last.” Houses at the UA research farm have either 75 or 90 bulb sockets, depending on the construction material.

Tabler concluded there’s not much variation in the overall energy consumption when switching among LEDs, cold cathode and dimmable fluorescent bulbs.

The average savings is about $100 over a 45-day period, which is the average amount of time commercial birds are raised before being slaughtered.

However, the savings from LEDs come at a high initial investment.

Bulbs can range from $32 to $45 each compared with 50 cents for incandescents.

But the estimated LED life expectancy can range between 35,000 to 50,000 hours, compared with 6,000 hours for incandescents.

Tabler estimates it would take more than six flocks of birds to achieve a return on investment with LED bulbs.

Susan R. Watkins, an associate professor in the Poultry Science Department at the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, agrees that LEDs will be a tougher sell to poultry farmers but sees adoption of the technology getting less expensive as demand for the product increases.

“LED is a new technology and it’s similar to the introduction of the cell phone 15 years ago,” she said, estimating that manufacturers and suppliers will bring the price in line through increased demand and competition.

Watkins boasts that for now the UA farm has been the first to test these kind of bulbs, but “we won’t be holding that rein for long.” For now, the source of agricultural LEDs in Arkansas has been limited to three companies.

While the UA has had a lot of inquiries from vendors about supplying bulbs, only NextGen Illumination, Luma Vue and Efficient Lights of Wake Forest, N.C., have provided an actual product to test, Watkins said.

She credits NextGen with pushing LED adoption and said the company had taken the lead.

NextGen, formed in April 2008, brought in one of its bulbs in January and had to quickly modify it since the light shone down in one spot about the size of a dinner plate, she said.

NextGen then designed a “Cadillac” of a bulb, which has been in a chicken house for as many as five flocks without a single replacement, Watkins said.

NextGen reports establishing agriculture LED projects throughout the country and company officials say Arkansas’ grant will not make or break the business.

And it helps that the agriculture industry has access to various government programs to support renewable energy and adoption of more efficient technology, said Christopher Callahan, president and founder of NextGen.

“We saw an opportunity [in the poultry industry] versus playing in the art museum and commercial high rise” market, said Callahan, who says the agricultural industry is as deserving of energy savings as larger, urban customers that LED suppliers typically target.

Poultry farmers eligible to receive the free bulbs must have tunnel-ventilated facilities, or chicken houses with solid walls or modified solid walls.

Arkansas has some 18,000 chicken houses with roughly half meeting that specification, said the UA’s Watkins.

As the bulb project rolls out, farmers who contract with each of the eight corporate sponsors such as Tyson Foods Inc., Simmons Foods and George’s Inc., are expected to test the bulbs.

Each “is targeting a specific size of bird to meet their market demand and also targeting different genetic packages to meet their market demand,” she said. “Those are going to influence what the lighting needs are.” And it’s well known among LED bulb vendors and farmers that it would not matter how much energy is saved if the bird doesn’t perform as well as it could.

Tabler at the broiler research farm said performance has not been compromised with the LED bulbs.

Hundley with Luma Vue said that while energy use might not represent the largest cost for poultry farmers, it is one thing they can largely control, “and this [LED bulb] is one way to use less energy.”

This article was published 11/01/2009