Off-grid slaughterhouses: services and use of renewable energy in inner areas.

At European level, there is a growing attention to inner rural areas carried out by the European Cohesion Policy. These areas have problems in terms of scarcity and economic inefficiency of productive activities, for the aging and loss of population and for the absence of basic services. At the same time, these areas could be a catalyst for the recovery and strengthening of regional identities. At national level, the Italian Department for Development and Economic Cohesion has developed indexes for mapping inner areas (European Commission, 2014). In this framework, it is strategic to strengthen the work of local authorities and processes to make optimal use of the structural funds from EU for the development and re-establishment of these areas. The goal of the study is to experiment the adoption of technology solutions in agriculture able to satisfy the energy needs of small scale food producers in areas with high environmental and landscape value. The specific objective is to find a winning solution for self-sufficiency and reducing emissions of mobile production and processing units. This study is focused on the potential of a PV system to guarantee the energy needs of a family farm and a mobile small slaughterhouse for sheep in a rural area of Umbria Region. To guarantee energy autonomy of the small farm chosen as case study, this paper shows that it is necessary a PV system of 7,88 kWp power and 22 Lithium-ion batteries (120 Ah). In this case the total energy overflow is 3172 kWh, but it is possible to use the 43,24 % of this energy for the operation of a slaughterhouse during March, April, August and October. This solution meets about the 18% of demand of lambs slaughtering in the study area. The mobile slaughterhouse is able to guarantee a real support to production process for several small farms that continue to oversee territories, local products, and communities located in the inner areas. Small-scale smart gridsare interesting for small family farms that adopt sustainable models and methods of production with low environmental impact and low energy demand to define the indications for their optimal energy planning. This paper concerns a proposal to ensure energy independence of small farms in inner areas, in a logic of energy sovereignty (United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service, 2015)