Design of a Low-Cost Solar-Powered Electric Fence System for Crop Protection in Farming Communities of Nasarawa State

Farmland encroachment by domestic and wild animals is a persistent source of crop losses and farmer-herder conflict in the agricultural communities of Nasarawa State in the North Central zone of Nigeria. This study presents the design of a solar-powered electric fence system that provides a low-cost, non-lethal deterrent for large and small animal intrusions on smallholder crop farms. The system consists of a 50-watt photovoltaic panel, a charge controller, a 40 Ah deep-cycle battery, and an energiser circuit generating short-duration high-voltage pulses along a multi-strand fence perimeter. The energiser circuit was designed and prototyped on a printed circuit board, producing output pulses of 5 kilovolts with a pulse duration of 1 millisecond and repetition rate of once per second. Energy demand calculations confirmed that the battery could sustain 72 hours of energiser operation without solar recharging, providing resilience against multi-day cloudy periods. Field tests were conducted on a 0.5-hectare demonstration farm in Lafia local government area, where animal intrusion events were monitored before and after fence installation over a two-month period. Recorded intrusion events reduced from an average of 17 per week before installation to zero after full fence commissioning. Total system cost for a perimeter of 300 metres was 125,000 naira. Keywords: solar electric fence, crop protection, animal intrusion, Nasarawa State, photovoltaic system.