Colin Glass from Dairy Holdings talks about Meridian's Irrigation Manager tool.

The rural sector is important to Meridian because it’s important to New Zealand. We have a special focus on our farming customers and we’re continuing to develop new services and initiatives to meet their specific needs and interests.

Meridian Irrigation Manager

For many farmers and horticultural businesses, irrigation is a significant cost. But now there is a powerful tool to help them manage that cost better, with the launch of Meridian Irrigation Manager.

What does it do?

Meridian Irrigation Manager is for large irrigators who buy electricity in half hour units. It’s an online tool that provides 24-hour access to simple, easy to understand graphs and reports about customers’ irrigation volumes and costs. It uses flow meters to record the volume of water pumped at each of their irrigation sites, then combines this information with their electricity usage and cost data. Customers can view and analyse this information through a variety of graphs and reports, at both summary and individual site levels.

With Meridian Irrigation Manager customers can see, for example, how much water they pumped at a particular site and when, how much electricity was used, and how much it cost. They can do comparisons and even download the data into a spreadsheet for more detailed analysis.

What are the benefits?

The system gives farmers information they wouldn’t otherwise be able to access in a timely way. It can help farmers make decisions on the best times to irrigate, and identify opportunities to increase the efficiency of their irrigation. The potential benefits include cost savings and productivity increases. We also store this information on behalf of the farmer.

With local authorities increasingly requiring detailed information on water usage, which can be difficult and time-consuming to provide, another benefit of Meridian Irrigation Manager is that it makes this information gathering much easier.

Seasons

For some time we’ve produced regular newsletters and communications for our residential, business and corporate customers – but not specifically for rural customers. This year we filled that gap with the launch of our Seasons newsletter.

Seasons contains articles and information of interest to farmers and rural customers. There’s also usually a competition with the chance to win a great prize such as Swanndri gear or farm energy use audits. It’s produced three times a year. Feedback we’ve received at Field Days and other rural events indicates that farming customers really like having a newsletter designed just for them.

You can view past issues of Seasons here.