The focus of this case study was to examine a singular process within the food system, identify the energy requirements of this process, apply alternative energy technology to the solution, and verify this feasibility of an alternative energy technology within this process; the process isolated for study is a small-scale poultry processing operation (maximum of 350 birds per day) during the extreme end of the pastured poultry season. An energy audit was performed of the poultry processing process and it was identified that process water heating required 98% of the total energy used for processing. By identifying the largest energy user, solar water heaters were selected due to their availability and moderate cost potential. The hypothesis for this study is as follows: If a solar water heating system is designed for a small scale poultry processing system, then a financial payback can be shown within 5 years. The evaluation of the hypothesis was conducted based on the following five factors, system efficiency, investment cost of the system, amount of energy generated by the system, time value of money, and cost of liquid propane. These factors were applied to three varying systems each of which had differing investment costs and energy generation capacity. The results are varying graphs that allow a producer to select the best system based upon their projected poultry volume per season and cost of liquid propane. Finally, it can be shown that a five year payback can be realized for a solar water heating system given the proper conditions.
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