★ SEAI Energy Awards 2026 Finalist · Small Business

Thirty Years, and a Finalist for SEAI Energy Awards 2026

In 2018 we set a public commitment. We nearly made it.

On our 2025 Sustainability page we committed to becoming a carbon-neutral business by 2025. Seven years later, in September 2026, AgriData Ltd marked thirty years in operation. One week after that, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland shortlisted us as finalists in their Energy Awards.

The idea of self-generated power on this land, though, is older than AgriData itself — our father built a waterwheel here in the 1930s that gave the family house its first electric light. The 2018 commitment was a return to a principle, not a new one.

This page is the formal case. The full account — written by the two people who lived it — tells the same seven years as narrative. The Gala Ceremony is on 4 November 2026 at the InterContinental Dublin.

Read the full account →

Aerial view of the AgriData site at Cluen, Bansha, Co. Tipperary

THE 2025 OUTCOMES

Verified against primary business records: six Electric Ireland invoices for 2018 electricity, sixty-one diesel invoices from our accounting system, and the Huawei FusionSolar monitoring system attached to the business meter.

63%

Reduction in total energy delivered to site, 2018 → 2025

100%

Elimination of on-site fossil fuels (kerosene and diesel)

~20 tonnes

CO₂ avoided every year, approximately 89% reduction

96.2%

Self-funded. €134,202 of €139,500 total from company reserves

                                    The money answer
                                

Does it pay back? The honest numbers.

If the question in your head is “yes but what does it actually cost and when does it pay back,” we published that as its own executive summary: before/after running costs, three defensible payback framings, SWOT analysis, and the live FusionSolar screenshot from this morning that answers "but what about winter?"

Read the honest numbers →

The Journey — Including the Failure

Phased investments, decided one at a time. Each informed the next.

1930s

Before AgriData. On this same land, our father hand-dug a headrace on the local river and built a 14-foot undershot waterwheel. It charged a bank of large glass 2.5-volt cells and gave the family house its first electric light — decades before rural electrification reached this part of Tipperary. The remains are still there.

1996

AgriData Ltd incorporated.

2007

Separate from the business: our family home converted from oil heating to a 50 kW wood gasifier using timber from our own forestry. Eighteen years of operation since. The experience shaped everything that followed on the business side.

2018

Public commitment to carbon neutrality by 2025 — read the full account. Baseline recorded: ~21,000 kWh grid electricity, 2,700 L kerosene, 2,750 L diesel.

2019

Two oil-fired central heating systems replaced with air source heat pumps. First EV charging on the business meter.

2020

Wind turbine installed — and underperformed. Surrounding tree cover reduced output well below expectations. The lesson — be ruthlessly honest in site surveys — shaped every subsequent decision. In the same year: 6 kWp solar PV and 15 kWh of battery storage, both of which performed strongly from day one.

2023

Mercedes GLC diesel replaced with Tesla Model Y AWD Long Range.

2024

Solar PV expanded by 15.66 kWp to 21.66 kWp total (56 panels). Battery storage doubled to 30 kWh. Ford Transit Connect replaced with VW ID Buzz. SEAI Non-Domestic Microgen grant €5,298 contributed to the PV expansion — the only grant received in the programme.

2025

100% elimination of on-site fossil fuels. 17.46 MWh of renewable electricity generated on-site. 5.71 MWh exported to the Irish grid.

2026

AgriData Ltd marks 30 years. SEAI Energy Awards shortlists AgriData as a finalist in the Small Business category. Gala ceremony on 4 November, InterContinental Dublin.

On the Wind Turbine, and Why We Leave it Standing

The 6 kW turbine we installed in 2020 was a bad decision in its own terms. The mature tree cover surrounding our site reduces wind to a level that no small turbine can productively work with. Output has been consistently disappointing.

We mention it in every forum we talk about this — including the SEAI application — because the lesson is more useful to other small businesses than a glossy success story. Before you commit capital to renewable generation, be ruthlessly honest about site conditions. We weren't, and we have a six-year-old reminder standing beside the solar arrays to prove it.

The same logic, at a different scale.

What AgriData managed over seven years — with its own money, no grants, on one small Tipperary site — is a working example of a simple proposition: existing technologies, applied with ambition, pay back.

The question we have been quietly asking ourselves since is: what would the same logic produce if it were applied, at national scale, to the systems that serve the whole country?

Read our proposal — Ireland's next Ardnacrusha moment →

We've worked hard for this. Now we'd like to share it.

If you're a small business thinking about your own transition, or an organisation documenting what works and what doesn't, we are genuinely open to hosting visits and sharing what we learned.

Visit the Site

Walk the site, see the installations, ask the awkward questions.

Email David Mullins →

Download the Supporting Document

Three-page PDF: comparison chart, timeline, investment breakdown.

Download PDF ↓