Solar Panels for Breweries, Distilleries and Vineyards

Solar for breweries, distilleries and vineyards

The same survey decides all of them: how much of the output you would use, and where panels can go. Bigger food and drink manufacturing sites: solar for food and drink.

Cooling, pumping and bottling loads

The IFC's guidelines for breweries describe the energy profile (IFC): breweries are relatively intensive users of both electrical and thermal energy. Thermal energy raises steam in boilers, used largely for wort boiling and water heating in the brewhouse and in the bottling hall. The process refrigeration system is typically the largest single consumer of electrical energy, but the brewhouse, bottling hall and waste water treatment plant can also account for substantial electricity demand.

• Refrigeration. Fermenters, conditioning tanks and cold rooms are cooled every day. Demand rises in warm weather, when panels produce most.
• Efficiency first. The IFC says raising the refrigeration system's evaporating temperature by 1 K cuts its electricity use by roughly 3 to 4 percent, so set temperatures and maintenance come before sizing panels.
• Pumps and compressed air. Transfers, cleaning in place and packaging lines run on pumps and air. The IFC says cutting compressed air pressure from 8 bar to 7 bar should reduce its electricity use by about 7 percent.
• Packaging days. Bottling and canning are heavy, but often on set days: schedule them for daylight where you can.

What solar can't do: brewing and distilling heat

Solar panels make electricity. In most breweries the wort is boiled with steam from a boiler (IFC), and in most distilleries the stills are heated by steam or direct firing. Unless that heat is electric, solar does nothing for it. Be wary of any quote that counts savings on gas.

Where a site has, or is moving to, electric heating, such as electric hot liquor tanks, heat pumps or an electric steam boiler, a larger solar system starts to make sense, often with a battery. Size it to the electric loads you have now and leave room to extend.

Rural sites and ground-mounted arrays

Many breweries, distilleries and wineries sit in the countryside with land around them. A ground array avoids roofs over production and spirit stores, but in England stand-alone panels at a non-domestic site are permitted only up to 9 square metres (Class K), so a business-scale array needs planning permission.

• The grid. Rural networks can limit export; a system sized to your own use is less affected.
• Cable runs. Distance from the array to the main switchboard adds cost.
• Roofs over production. Panels over brewing, fermentation or a bonded warehouse need fire and access planning. RC62, the insurers' recommendations for PV, is the document insurers refer to.

Sources: Class K, RC62. More: ground-mounted solar, grid connection and fire risk and insurance.

Seasonal peaks and the harvest

Source: PVGIS. A brewery busiest through the summer lines up well with solar. A winery busiest at the autumn harvest gets less from the panels just when it needs most; summer cooling and a tasting room or shop use the summer output. A battery or simply sizing for the summer base load are the usual answers.

Paying for it

Electricity you generate and use yourself avoids the price you would pay for it, and HMRC says an auto-generator need not account for the Climate Change Levy on self supplies of renewable electricity (CCL1/3). A business that buys the system can usually claim capital allowances. Vineyards that are farm businesses should check farm solar grants. More: the Climate Change Levy, capital allowances and payback.