Scottish Daily Mirror

20 March 2009

I’ve got pig power

Farm turns swine waste into leccy

A farmer is making a pig of himself... but only in the amount of electricity his 3,000 swine produce.

Andrew Rennie is the first farmer in Scotland to use his pigs' dung to heat and power his farm-and he has enough electricity left over to sell it to the National Grid.

The 40-year-old said last night: "This is very old technology, actually. Years ago they used to collect the dung from the fields and stockpile it.

"The big houses and castles would get heat off it. It's only now finding its niche again."

Andrew became interested in using the waste while on a trip to Germany - where 4,000 pig farmers produce their own electricity - with his wife Annette, 41.

The couple bought themselves an “anaerobic digester” which heats the waste to produce methane.

The gas is then pumped to an engine which turns generators to produce 320kwh of heat and electricity an hour.

Just 40kwh is needed at Gask Farm, at Turriff in Aberdeen and the rest is then sold on.

Pig farmers in the UK have been watching Andrew's power project with interest - and some plan to set up their own.

Doug Stewart at Green Energy UK, which manages Andrew's electricity, said: "We have generators all across Britain, but Andrew is the only one using pig power."

Andrew's generator is the only one using pig power.