One farmer's battle to get 'ground current' out of his barn

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

'It's worse than a barn fire,' says dairy farmer Allan Erb. 'With a barn fire, you get to start over. This, you can't start over. It's 24/7. It never quits.'

by DON STONEMAN


Waterloo Region dairy farmer Allan Erb has gone to extraordinary lengths to get what local electrical consultant Lorne Lantz calls "ground current" out of his barn.

With somatic cell count (SCC) averages exceeding 500,000 in milk from Erb's 36 cows, Dairy Farmers of Ontario threatened to cut off his milk pickups. There were bleeding sores on cows' legs, blood samples with cortisol that indicated stress, and no explanation from a veterinarian that the cause was water or feed. Erb held the marketing board at bay by prematurely culling the highest SCC cows.

Lantz tested for alternating current on metal pipes in the barn and found 10 to 20 milliamps (mA) flowing through the grounding system on the barn, even when hydro power was shut off at the road. On Lantz's advice, Erb dug a trench five feet deep and 500 feet long around the west side of his Wellesley Township barn and buried a single sheet of sheet metal 42 inches wide on its edge. Another sheet was placed on the east side of the barn and they were connected with number 6 wire.

Lantz tests with a Fluke 360 Leakage Clamp. He says that, prior to hooking up the metal "shield," he measured 9.5 mA of electricity in the barn. After the shield was hooked up, the current was reduced to 1.4 mA. He believes the shield diverts ground current around the barn and puts it back into the ground at a safe distance.

Lantz calls the problem "alarming." It shows up in barns as unexplained high somatic cell counts and diarrhea in very young calves that can lead to death. The current does the damage, not the voltage, he asserts. He compares "current" to the amount of water going through a hose while "voltage" is the pressure that is behind the water.

Erb started to breathe more easily after installing the shield and his somatic cell count dropped to a reasonable 150,000. His herd was starting to regenerate. But his local utility, Waterloo North Hydro, has hooked up three more services to the single-phase line that runs past his farm. Lantz says testing shows current in the barn has risen to 1.7 mA; and to a startling 14 mA if the shield is disconnected.

Erb says he didn't have these concerns until new development took place nearby.

A mile or so west, the crossroads hamlet of Kingwood has grown from "one house on each corner," to 12 houses, a school and a church, Erb says. "Every time they do something to the west of me, things in the barn get worse," he says.

Five years ago, Erb installed a Ronk blocker. It did nothing. Lorne Lantz says a year ago they replaced the Ronk with a Dairyland Isolator and the situation improved. "We knew we had current in the head rail and the grounding system with the hydro shut off," he says. "It's worse than a barn fire," Erb says. "With a barn fire, you get to start over. This, you can't start over. It's 24/7. It never quits."

Gordon Erb milks 80 cows in a tie stall barn within sight of his uncle Allan's farm. He says he's at the end of a power line and there are new customers. His somatic cell counts are getting worse as more services are added in the area. He says a new electrical code calls for a ground rod on every third post and every post with a switch.

"To me that is a big mistake. They are driving current into the ground," he says.

Lantz says the June 2009 ruling by the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) that allows 0.5 volts of stray voltage isn't solving problems for dairy farmers. Driving more ground rods into the earth helps reduce stray voltage, but it sends more electrical current into the ground.

He wants the Ontario Energy Board to reopen the Ground Current Pollution Act of 2006 "and eliminate the electrical distributors from using the earth as a return path for their neutral current."

Lee Montgomery, a former Holstein breeder from Kent County, has suffered from stray voltage as much as any farmer in the province. He supports Lantz's position. The Ontario Energy Board has said it will re-address the issues if so directed by the energy minister, Montgomery says.

Dave Wilkinson, vice-president of operations at Waterloo North Hydro, says "we released a letter" to 400 customers the utility believes are farmers during the third week of July. "We are just starting to receive requests from customers for investigations. It would be premature to release a set of numbers. We have not heard back from all the people we expect to."

Waterloo North will test and monitor to identify problems. He confirms that the July letter was in response to the 2009 OEB ruling. "We don't expect this to be a short-term situation," he says. "We have been working with customers over the past two to three years to correct problems or to install filter equipment when we needed to do that. We understand it is a serious matter and we are applying resources to try to quantify it."

Regarding the assertion by Lantz and Erb that more poles are grounded than in the past, Wilkinson said: "I'm not sure that is an accurate statement. I recognize this has created concern and difficulty for many farmers and there have been people trying to help them, and that some of them have provided their opinion in a way that they believe is correct."

Ontario Federation of Agriculture vice president Don McCabe plans to visit Lantz's clients this fall. He says Hydro One, the major supplier of power in rural Ontario, reported only 11 cases in the last year and they have all been resolved.

Montgomery also believes the incidence is more widespread than Hydro One says.

Farmers are afraid to report the problems because they will be labelled as bad managers or as being crazy. But McCabe says nothing can be done if problems aren't reported.

Gencor, Ontario's largest cattle genetics co-operative, supports Montgomery's efforts to reopen the Ground Current Act. Ontario Holstein Branch is also backing Montgomery, says general manager Jason French. "Our board is currently in support of pushing the issue further to get resolved."

"We do have a lot of our membership being affected by ground current. You would think that with a new barn everything would be perfect," but that's often where problems are worst. BF