Miller's Dairy

The solar thermal system at Miller's Dairy near Creemore Ontario, provides domestic hot water for both the milk processing and bottling plant as well as in the dairy barn. Hot water in the plant is used for washing the returned glass bottles in the bottle washer as well as pipelines, pasteurization equipment, tanks, stainless steel milk lines and bottling equipment.

Excess hot water from the milk processing plant is sent to the dairy barn. Hot water in the dairy barn is used for washing the milk tank, pipeline, and milking units in the milking parlour. The hot water needed for the dairy barn alone accounts for about 1600 litres of hot water used per day on the farm.

A 54-kilowatt S-Power solar thermal system was installed on the milk plant, along with 3, 450-litre hot water storage tanks. These tanks take all the water to be heated and send it on to the water heating system in the plant. If the water is hot enough the water heating system won't fire. If it isn't hot enough the water heating system will top the temperature up as needed.

When these 3, 450-litre storage tanks reach a pre-set temperature a circulation pump starts and transfers the heat 100 metres to the dairy barn to 2, 800-litre storage tanks. These tanks are supplied with warmed water from a heat recovery tank. The heat recovery tank captures the heat from the refrigerant used to cool the milk in the bulk tank. Water passes through the 2, 800-litre tanks into a propane fired water heater. The water heater will only fire as needed.

This installation features a solar thermal monitoring system that can be viewed on-line. Installed are pressure sensors, temperature sensors, flow sensors and a radiation sensor. Along with a data logger we are able to monitor performance. Monitoring the system allows us to fine tune the settings to capture as much energy as possible. Settings in the control also allow the system to alert the owner and or service technician via email of any problems, for example, a system pressure drop or sensor failure.

Save the link to this page to your device to monitor the performance of the system.