SUN-POWERED WINE FARM SELLS ENERGY BACK TO THE GRID

 CLIENT: Nitida Wine Farm

LOCATION: Durbanville

THE CHALLENGE

Nitida Wine Farm is a renowned wine farm in the Durbanville valley that is working towards significantly reducing its carbon footprint and becoming more eco-friendly and. They were also looking for solutions to eliminate the effect of load-shedding on their business as it was impacting their production capabilities as well as their customer experience. Nitida approached Open Energy for a solution.

THE SOLUTION

Together with Nitida Wine Farms’ partners, we built a solution with the aim of providing a near zero requirement from the national grid and provide back-up power in times of load-shedding and grid downtime. We invested numerous hours with the client to truly understand their requirements and the unique inner workings of the farm as well as conducting calculated energy audits before coming up with a design. For this design we used:

• 2 x 50 kW High Voltage Hybrid Inverters
• 2x 100kWh Lithium battery contingent 
• 100 kWp Solar Array

THE RESULT

Now, by harnessing the power of the sun, Nitida Wine Farm runs almost 100% independently from the grid in the daylight hours. They also enjoy backup power for all loads during load-shedding and unplanned power outages.

When the Farms electrical load requirement is low and the solar array is generating excess energy, this energy is being exported back into the national grid to received credits from the utility provider. This export of excess energy further aids in assisting Nitida Wine Farm to reduce the time period on its return on investment.