Energy efficiency of incubator stations

Energy efficiency will be of increasing importance in the future, and the aim of this research is to determine the consumption of human and machine work on three types of incubator stations for one-day-old chicken production. These stations differ in production volume, technical and technological characteristics. The energy efficiency of incubator stations was determined with chronograph measurement of human work, energy consumption for each machine and equipment involved in the incubation process. Comparison of obtained data was performed in numerical values of production per chicken. Mini-incubator station had the lowest energy efficiency with 83,15% of energy related to the incubator, 16,62% of lighting, and 0,23% of the ovoscope. This station consumed 652,2 machine work hours or 6,52 hours/chicken, human work 24,4 hours or 0,24 hours/chicken and electricity 31,75 kWh or 0,31 kWh/chicken. The medium-sized incubator station consumed 670,7 hours of machine work which is about 0,018 hours/chicken, human work 291,82 hours or 0,1076 hours/chicken, and electricity 8 341,21 kWh or 0,22 kWh/chicken. The large-sized incubator station consumed 1 310,1 hours of machine work or 0,013 hours/chicken, human work 769,14 hours or 0,008 hours/chicken and electricity 30 672,71 kWh or 0,32 kWh/chicken. The incubator station, Poljovet d.o.o., recorded a medium positive correlation between machine and human work and a strong positive correlation between machine work and electricity. Also, mini-incubator station in Pazarić recorded a strong positive correlation between machine and human work and a medium positive correlation between machine work and electricity. We concluded that energy efficiency was most affected by the heating system and large incubator stations had an advantage over small ones