Wine growers can keep a close eye on vineyard weather thanks to ioSphere
New Zealand is famous for producing great wines. In 2021 the Kiwi industry exported $1.92bn worth of delicious product. Savignon Blanc and Pinot Noir from New Zealand rank among the very best in the world.
The grapes New Zealand produces are worth up to $25,000 per hectare to the grower and few industries are as sensitive to local weather variations as vineyards. With New Zealand’s highly variable island climate, it is critical for vineyard managers to have consistent access to local weather data to protect their valuable crop.
The Waipara Valley in North Canterbury, is one of New Zealand’s fastest growing sub-regions. Its soils and climate produce distinctive Rieslings, Rose, Pinot Noirs, Syrah and Chardonnays. But, as the locals will tell you, the valley contains a lot of “meso-climates” which demand great skill of the wine grower. Waipara is susceptible to late frosts, high summer temperatures and it’s also right in the firing line of the famously drying Nor’Wester wind.
One of the skilled local growers and winemakers is Kirk Bray, of George’s Road wines.
Kirk was very interested when he heard about ioSphere’s ability to economically deliver weather station data over the low cost Swarm IoT satellite network from anywhere on his property. “Vineyards need good local weather data to manage frost control and irrigation systems. We can’t get reliable cellular reception out here in the vineyards and it’s always been way too expensive to consider satellite services. We have just made do with the weather data coming from the Waipara weather station. But that doesn’t really capture what’s happening in our micro-climate. When we spoke to ioSphere and learned their Swarm gateway could transmit the data we needed very economically, we saw real potential".
The ioSphere team has deployed an ioSphere Swarm satellite gateway on Georges Road vineyard. The gateway is connected to a SenseCAP Orch compact weather station which captures air temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, and light intensity. The whole system is powered by a 20 Watt solar panel with sufficient battery life to continue broadcasting weather data over night and through any overcast days. The weather data is sent over Swarm’s low earth orbit satellite network every hour and it is presented for the grower in a user-friendly dashboard inside the Losant enterprise IoT platform.
The Georges Road installation is a pilot project, intended to demonstrate how reliably the ioSphere gateway can connect to the Swarm satellite network.
“We see weather stations for vineyards as a huge market for Swarm” says Donna Henderson, ioSphere’s Business Development Leader. “In an area like Waipara, where millions of dollars worth of grapes are harvested each year, and a lot of variation in weather occurs, it makes sense to invest in weather monitoring to help protect your crop”.
The ioSphere Swarm gateway deployed at Georges Road Winery gives a compelling return on investment too. Given the high value of the grapes being protected the USD $1,000 cost of a Swarm satellite IIoT gateway, and the $15 monthly charge for Swarm LEO network access; the gateway will pay itself off many times over. “It will only take one large frost event being better managed, or more precise irrigation during just one dry period for the whole investment to be repaid” says Henderson.
“New Zealand’s wine industry is a jewel in the crown of our primary sector” says Hamish Hutton, the CEO of ioSphere. “It’s exciting that ioSphere are one of the very first companies in the world to bring back vineyard weather station data over the game-changing new Swarm Satellite network”.