Name's Doug Lovegrove. And we're at just outside of the Adelaide River township. We run two types of cattle here, some Grey Brahman and the Droughtmaster. We've got, yeah, we're just breeding cattle and selling a few overseas. Just the cost of power was going up and up, everything goes up, nothing comes down, and decided to go solar probably two or three years ago, and we're just about solar right through now.
Yeah, I mean, you've got a little bit of an initial outlay and then from then on it's maintenance-free. I put the bore in about two years ago and decided in the last couple of months to get solar put on it. I want more water here. So yeah, I think it's, you know, like it's a very expensive outlay for a start, but it pays for itself over the years. This here goes underwater in the wet season. So you couldn't run power down here anyway, so it's up high enough, so it's out of the high water mark, no power going through it, so everything comes from the free sun.
I've got the extra water, it's proving itself. Everyone should do it. I've got another bore that's also solar, but this time of the year we do run out of water. So we put the extra bore in to have the extra water. If you want your solar on, all you do is just turn this switch on here and give it a minute and it'll crank up and out comes our water.
How is a solar powered water pump helping Doug's cattle farm in the Northern Territory?
Video Transcript