Demand Response for California Agricultural Irrigation

A paper by Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions, “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­tural Irri­ga­tion: A Scop­ing Study” has just been pub­lished by the Demand Response Research Cen­ter (DRRC).

Link to the DRRC version

Con­tinue read­ing

Frost Protection Collaboration with UC Davis

Frost Protection Collaboration UC DavisiP Solu­tions is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Bio­me­te­o­rol­ogy and Atmos­pheric Sci­ence depart­ments of U.C. Davis on a frost pro­tec­tion mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem.  A sys­tem pro­vided by iP Solu­tions has just been installed at the UC Davis Camp­bell test site.  Tem­per­a­ture and humid­ity data cor­rec­tion is cur­rently being conducted.

 

Raspberry Pi Weather Station

Raspberry Pi Weather StationiP Solu­tions has cre­ated a Rasp­berry Pi weather station. The Rasp­berry Pi plat­form employs a Debian Wheezy Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion.  iP Solu­tions designed and fab­ri­cated an ana­log and dig­i­tal I/O board to inter­face the Rasp­berry Pi to tem­per­a­ture, humid­ity, baro­met­ric pres­sure and wind-speed sen­sors.  Addi­tion­ally, iP Solu­tions cre­ated a sep­a­rate pro­pri­etary tem­per­a­ture and humid­ity sen­sor module.

 

Emerging Technologies Summit Presentation

Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions was invited to speak at the Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies Sum­mit in Pasadena, CA on Octo­ber 15th, 2012.  He pre­sented “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­tural Irri­ga­tion” to the ses­sion titled “The Untapped Resource, Demand Response for the Indus­trial and Agri­cul­tural Mar­kets”.

The Power-point Presentation

Down­load (PPTX, 1.24MB)

 

Invitation to Join DRRC Industrial Controls Experts Group

Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions cor­po­ra­tion has been invited to join the Demand Response Research Cen­ter (DRRC) Indus­trial Con­trols Experts Group.  On Feb­ru­ary 10th, 2011 the group met to con­sult on a study, “Assess­ing the Con­trol Sys­tems Capac­ity for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Indus­tries”.

Link to Final Report at the DRRC

Precision Irrigation

iP Solu­tions announces the pub­li­ca­tion of  “Pre­ci­sion Irri­ga­tion: A Method to Save Water and Energy While Increas­ing Crop Yield, a Tar­geted Approach for Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­ture” by Gary Marks.

Crop irri­ga­tion require­ments vary in time with weather and soil con­di­tions. Pre­ci­sion
irri­ga­tion pro­vides a means for eval­u­at­ing a crop’s water require­ments and a means for
apply­ing the right amount at the right time. Often in the lit­er­a­ture, pre­ci­sion irri­ga­tion is referred to as irri­ga­tion sched­ul­ing: That is sched­ul­ing based on envi­ron­men­tal data, whether that data comes from local field sen­sors or from more global sources such as regional mete­o­ro­log­i­cal information.

Apply­ing pre­ci­sion irri­ga­tion prac­tices offers sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial for sav­ing water,
energy, and money. Fur­ther, it has the poten­tial to increases crop yield. There is an
addi­tional pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact from pre­ci­sion irri­ga­tion in that farm runoff, a major source of water pol­lu­tion, can be reduced.

While pre­ci­sion irri­ga­tion has value for all types of irri­ga­tion in any region of the world, this paper focuses on the irri­ga­tion of Cal­i­for­nia agri­cul­ture, which uses nearly 80% of the state’s water and more than ten bil­lion Kilo­watt hours of elec­tric­ity annu­ally. That is enough elec­tric­ity to power one mil­lion typ­i­cal Amer­i­can house­holds each year. The approx­i­mate power plant capac­ity required to power Cal­i­for­nia irri­ga­tion through the months of May through Octo­ber is 2500 MW, which is equiv­a­lent to 250 Min-Nuke power plants run­ning at an aver­age of 10MW each. The car­bon foot­print asso­ci­ated
with the power is approx­i­mately six mil­lion met­ric tons of CO2 per year.

See full paper…