Smarter Frost Fighting with AGI’s Latest Software

If you’ve been around Central Otago, you’ll know frost fighting is just part of life for growers. Those cold snaps can make or break a season, and keeping our cherry buds safe through spring is one of the biggest jobs on the orchard. But on our farm, we don’t just fight frost the usual way. We run fully electric, and that includes our frost fighting fans that are powered straight from the grid, no diesel required. This season we’ve taken things a step further with a world-first upgrade: programmable rotation software, thanks to the legends at AGI Frost Fans.

So what does that actually mean? Traditional fans spin around in circles, pushing warm air down and circulating it to stop frost settling. The problem is, orchards aren’t perfect circles. Ours is a long rectangle with a few tricky corners. That means some areas are riskier than others, and treating every section of the orchard the same isn’t always efficient. With AGI’s new programmable software, we can now tell our fan exactly where to point and for how long. Got a danger zone at the back of the block? The fan will hold there for 35 seconds. Shorter section up front? Just 10 seconds will do. It’s about putting the warm air where it’s needed most and not wasting precious time and energy. Even better, we can see all this happening on the control panel, so we know exactly how our fan is performing in real time. It’s smart, simple, and makes our frost fighting more effective than ever before.

We’re proud to say we are the very first orchard in the world to be running this new prototype software, and we reckon it’s going to be a game changer for the industry. Big thanks to Stian and the AGI team who flew out from South Africa to get us set up and ready for the season. Now we’re just waiting for those frosty spring mornings to put it to the test.

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Want to know more about AGI? https://agifrostfans.com/

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Watch: https://youtube.com/shorts/f5wocuJu-kI?feature=shared