A Fleurieu Peninsula family has built a fully off-grid robotic dairy that took out the 2026 South Australian Innovative Farmer of the Year award.

Wes and Rita Hurrell and son James milk 600 cows over two operations, using six Lely robots for one farm, solar, battery storage and methane capture. The plan was built from scratch over a four-year period.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Wes says.

The farm has no grid connection.

“Even now on a good sunny day, we’ll have enough storage and power to run it for 24/7,” Wes says, with a 320kW solar array and 645kW of batteries.

Son James won Young Dairy Farmer of the Year, and runs an experiment across the barn, with controlled traffic on one side and free flow on the other.

Wes says the system should lift the operation from about 70 cows per labour unit towards 200 once completed.

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