EOS Estate Winery
Nestled in Paso Robles, EOS is the first winery in a county blanketed with vineyards that has completely converted to solar power and the largest in California's Central Coast to operate on 100 percent solar. The 540 kW installation comprises more than 3,000 PV modules and over two acres of ground-mounted tracking solar arrays in order to provide all the electrical power needs of the winery and tasting room. Of all the other potential suppliers, Conergy "came back with a much greater efficiency level with their system that allowed them to capture a larger amount of solar power than the other stable systems," said winery owner Jeff Hopmayer.
"We knew we wanted solar, and we knew it could be done on our site, but we just didn't know how it could be done in the most efficient way," he added. Conergy's state-of-the-art active tracking system enables EOS to efficiently produce the most power possible throughout the day, avoiding hours of shading confronted by standard systems that are set to peak hours. The tracker turns from east to west once a day to deliver up to 25% more energy than fixed-tilt technology. Additional roof-mounted arrays provide all of the winery's hot water needs using 60 solar hot water collectors. EOS. leadership in the winery industry will save 360 trees planted, and over 21,000 tons of CO2 over 25 years. "We strongly believe in producing our wines in a way that is friendly to the land and environment as a whole," notes Hopmayer.
One of the big benefits of choosing this highly efficient system, even though, in this case it will take longer to install, is that the winery gets rebated on the amount of energy it produces. If the building does not need the electricity, it goes out to the grid and EOS is paid a credit by the utility. In this sense, the grid is essentially being used as a big battery. The excess energy not being used by the winery will feed into the grid.
To support EOS's financial objectives, California is progressive as far as tax credits are concerned, offering a 30 percent federal tax credit and plus a five-year accelerated depreciation for all solar PV systems and hot-water systems. For commercial businesses there's no credit cap. So, a commercial business like EOS will get the rebate, the tax credit, and the accelerated depreciation. This totals a savings of about $8.5 million on their electricity over a 25-year period. As electricity prices continue to rise, EOS will have secured its price of electricity at a much lower rate, so the savings will continue to increase. Hopmayer noted, "If you look at our monthly energy bill usage, the system is costing us less to fund per month than it would cost to pay our energy without the system." For companies paying higher rates, like EOS, the credits and rebates make using solar a sort of no-brainer.
