Solar roof crowns famous brewery

Power purchase agreement filters out upfront costs

By Kate Bachman

January 1, 2011

Powerhouse Anheuser-Busch InBev installed two Orion solar arrays on its Newark, N.J. brewery roof. The brewer took advantage of a power purchase agreement brokered with Orion to eliminate the long ROI normally associated with a PV-solar energy installation.

The making of a bottle of Budweiser beer on line 40 in the 60-year-old Newark, N.J., Anheuser-Busch brewery is a multistep, monthlong process. On an average day, seven railcars full of barley malt, corn, rice, wheat, and hops are mashed, liquefied, blended, boiled, steeped, fermented, cooled, cold-filtered, beechwood-aged, and finished. In an automated process, 900 12- ounce brown bottles are sterilized, rinsed, and filled with the golden, foamed brew per minute.

In the final capper operation, the multiridged crown is pinch-closed around the bottle’s mouth, and voila! The crisp, refreshing beverage is ready to be the hand-held accompaniment to sporting events, barbecues, picnics, parties, and on TV viewing sofas the world over.

Anheuser-Busch has a legacy of environmental stewardship (www.anheuser-busch.com/Environment). Its new parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev, continues the legacy. The company, which partners with the EPA WasteWise and the Climate Leaders programs, recently set three-year goals for energy efficiency, water reduction, and greenhouse gas reduction.

On World Environment Day, June 5, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Carlos Brito, described as a “no-nonsense guy,” worked on a Newark community park improvement project alongside the company rank and file.

It should come as no surprise, then, that sustainable manufacturing practices are integral ingredients of the brewer’s operational recipe, including heat recovery, carbon dioxide (CO₂) reuse, water conservation, and recycling (see Brewing Beer, Preserving the Planet).

Perhaps the crowning achievement of those initiatives is the most recent—the installation of a rooftop solar energy system that provides about 10 percent of the brewery’s electricity.

Rooftop Solar Energy

Rich Guindon, environment, health, safety and security manager for the Newark plant, said the solar energy panel system was implemented as part of an overall corporate goal to source some of the brewery’s power from renewable energy. The rooftop system takes advantage of available space on the roof, and each of the roof levels can house its own array.

The solar photovoltaic (PV) panels capture DC electricity. Because the U.S.’s electricity infrastructure uses AC electricity, the panels are wired together, and the electricity runs through conduit to a power unit on the roof that houses a large inverter that converts the DC energy to AC (see Figure 1). That is wired into the breaker that is tied into the plant equipment. The energy goes straight into the breaker and onto the line using the electricity, Guindon explained.

Orion Engineered Systems, division of Orion Energy Systems Inc., Manitowoc, Wis., supplied and installed the brewery’s solar energy panel arrays on two rooftops. Orion’s role is known in the industry as EPC—finance, design, engineering, procurement, and construction, explained John Scribante, president of Orion Engineered Systems. “We’re the general contractor. Our business is to take everything into consideration and design and build the best system for the application.

“A lot of different pieces come together on a solar power system,” Scribante said. “You have the panels and the inverter, which converts the power from DC electricity to AC electricity, and then there’s the monitoring system to monitor and measure all the performance. The balance of the system is the wiring, junction boxes—all the various pieces that tie the system together.

“We source the panels. We buy the inverters, and some of the other components. We also manufacture the raceway wiring and some components of the balance of the system at our factory, and then we piece it all together.”

Cylindrical Solar Panels

The type of solar panels that Orion installed on the brewery roof is a type of thin-film PV in a relatively new cylindrical format (see Figure 2). Solyndra manufactures the glass tubes, applies the PV film, and assembles the panel.

“Copper indium gallium diselenide [CIGS], or thin-film technology has been around for many years, Scribante said. “It’s really an old technology applied to a new format. Thin-film technology has been around for years, but it’s only been applied to a tubular surface in the last three years or so.”

Although thin-film technology has a lower peak efficiency rating—10 to 12 percent versus 14 to 15 percent for silicon crystalline solar energy panels—because the cylindrical panels absorb solar energy for longer periods of the day, they generate more power overall. “It makes greater use of the sun,” Scribante said.

“The more traditional flat panel is going to be at its peak only at high noon when the sun is perpendicular to the panel, because that’s when the sun is directly hitting the panel. When the sun starts moving off that peak, you start getting more deflection, so efficiency really drops off in the morning and the afternoon as the sun rolls across the horizon.

“This tubular design is always perpendicular to the sun throughout the day, because as the sun is rolling across the panels, it’s really rolling around those tubes. So there is more power generation, more throughput, or more kilowatt-hours [kWh] per panel than with a flat panel system,” Scribante said. “If it’s less efficient at noon but generates power for longer periods of time during the day, it generates more electricity.”

Low Maintenance. Guindon said the cylindrical panel format reduces cleaning and maintenance as well.

“From a maintenance point of view, they’re effectively self-cleaning because rain washes off a round surface better than a flat panel. Too, because they’re like a screen, most snow falls through. So even in winter, we continue to get good performance,” Guindon said.

Power Purchase Agreement Relaxes ROI Concerns

One of solar energy’s obstacles to acceptance has been its relatively long return on investment (ROI). In this capital-tight economy, a growing number of manufacturers are capitalizing on power purchase agreements (PPA) that remove all of the upfront costs.

Anheuser-Busch capitalized on a PPA that Orion offers. Scribante explained how the company’s PPA works.

“These agreements are a contract for the customer to purchase the power that is generated by our system on the customer’s premises over a period of time—it can be 10, 15, 20 years. The cost per kilowatt-hour is then metered using a revenue-grade metering system. Then once a month, we send a bill to the customer for the amount of solar power that was produced.”

Orion owns the system, he explained, and is responsible for its maintenance, operation, permitting, cleaning, servicing, and repairs. “We hold the insurance and take care of making sure we produce the power that is contracted for,” Scribante said. In addition, Orion nets any associated tax benefits, renewable-energy credits, and investment tax credits.

“Then we pass that along to our customers in the form of less costly electricity,” Scribante said.

“It’s a great way for our customers to get into solar and reduce their energy costs without spending money upfront,” he added.

Installation

The primary installation challenges were getting the maximum watts per square foot on the roof without making it too heavy, according to Guindon and Scribante.

“There were lots of obstructions on the Anheuser-Busch InBev roof—rooftop ventilation, various roof hatches, and so forth [see Figure 3 and Figure 4]. We had to design a system that could be modular, that could snap together like LEGO® blocks so we could build around the obstructions,” Scribante said.

More Power per Foot. Another reason Orion chose to mount cylindrical solar energy panels was that the design allowed more panels to fit in the relatively constricted space of the brewer’s multilevel rooftop.

“Because a silicon crystalline flat panel has to be tilted to optimize the sun’s rays, clearance must be allocated to account for the shadow it casts. The cylindrical panels can lay flat on the roof, butted end to end, thereby allowing more to fit in the space, Scribante said. “I can fill the whole roof with solar.

“On the first phase of the brewery roof project, the next best alternative that we considered was a 400-kW flat panel solar system, and we installed 535 kW. So we got 20 percent more panels on the roof because we didn’t have to account for the shading,” Scribante said. “If your space is constrained, you get more wattage from the roof with the cylindrical system.”

Lightweight, Nonballasted. Another consideration was that the roof was a coal tar pitch type. “We couldn’t let the solar panel system sink down into the roof, so we had to have a very lightweight system with the weight distributed over a larger area to protect the roof,” Guindon said.

The Solyndra cylindrical panel is a nonballasted, nonpenetrating type. “The reason you normally have to ballast the panel and basically put weight on the rack is to keep the wind from lifting it up off the roof,” Scribante said. “Because the Solyndra system is tubular, it’s like a screen and the wind blows through it, so you don’t have to ballast it. The Anheuser-Busch installation was 3.3 lbs. per square foot, whereas if you had to weight it down, you might be at 5 or 7 lbs. per square foot. So we put up much less weight.”

Nonpenetrating roof-mount systems are designed to connect the solar power system to a roof using weight, rather than fasteners that must go through the roof.

Mounting System. Nonpenetrating roof-mount systems are designed to connect the solar power system to a roof using weight, rather than fasteners that must go through the roof (see Figure 5). Because they do not create holes for the attachment like screws, nails, and traditional roofing hardware does, nonpenetrating systems help maintain the roof’s integrity (see “Does rooftop solar make sense for manufacturers?” in the Jan./Feb. 2010 issue of Green Manufacturer).

It was necessary for the installation timetable for the array to be relatively short and nondisruptive so it wouldn’t interfere with the brewery’s production, Guindon said. “They were probably on that roof for 90 days during the construction of the project. It was very nondisruptive. It’s up and out of our way on the roof, not in the plant.”

The permitting and applications took about 60 additional days, Scribante added.

Line 40 Keeps on Brewing

The Newark, N.J., brewery makes the Budweiser®, Bud Light®, Busch®, Busch Light®, Michelob ULTRA®, Natural Light®, Natural Ice®, King Cobra®, Rolling Rock® and Rock Light® for six Northeastern states. When the Northeast experienced a widespread blackout in 2003, at least some beer lovers might have been thinking, “Hey how are they going to brew my Bud Light?”

Now that the Newark Anheuser-Busch brewery plant sources 10 percent of its electricity from solar energy, beer lovers can heave a sigh of relief in knowing that line 40 could keep on running.