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posted by on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-in-time-for-st-patrick's-day dept.

The Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is using a bunch of Tesla batteries, along with solar power and a microturbine generator, to help make beer brewing more environmentally friendly at its Chico, California facility.

The company has installed a 1MWh Tesla Powerpack battery system, taking power from an existing 10,751-panel, two-megawatt solar installation — the largest owned by any US brewery — and a two megawatt microturbine. In all, the setup allows Sierra Nevada to offset around 20 percent of its yearly electricity use.

[...] The beer-brewing process uses a lot of electricity, heating and cooling batches of water and beer over several weeks of production. Big industrial operations like Sierra Nevada pay for electricity both on overall use as well as peak usage over the course of a month — and anything companies can do to reduce that peak use can result in significant cost savings.


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:10PM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 18 2017, @01:10PM (#455366) Journal

    The story is about a brewery using solar power and a microturbine to offset its electricity costs, but that's technically boring.

    Respectfully, I disagree completely. Actually using solar power for something useful (as opposed to "look, we have solar cells!") is very interesting. Anyone making renewable energy work is doing good work that benefits our society; nonrenewable hydrocarbon products will probably not last forever and it would be nice to have other energy systems up to speed by the time we need them.

    But wait! They're using a Tesla battery pack! Awesome! Hold the presses! The new title is Tesla saves the day!

    The point of the whole Tesla connection is that the Tesla batteries are made in Nevada, as is the beer. Like you, I question Tesla getting first billing here; it's the brewery setup that's impressive and interesting, as mentioned above, and the fact that they are using off-the-shelf Tesla batteries is great but probably not make-or-break.

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  • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday January 18 2017, @03:51PM

    by Whoever (4524) on Wednesday January 18 2017, @03:51PM (#455461) Journal

    The point of the whole Tesla connection is that the Tesla batteries are made in Nevada, as is the beer.

    I know that people don't read the article, but perhaps you could read the summary:

    make beer brewing more environmentally friendly at its Chico, California facility