The future is bright for Australian Craft Brewery choosing FIMER to power its site

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

FIMER helps Moon Dog Brewing save 240 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year thanks to its PVS-100 inverter.

Environmental sustainability is a core value for Moon Dog Brewing, an independent Australian craft brewery based out of Melbourne. So, when the company opened its new brewery in October 2019, exploring ways to reduce their carbon footprint was key.

This follows a general trend spanning the beer industry worldwide, with smaller independent brew pubs and large international beer companies seeing the potential that solar power holds when it comes to offsetting the energy-intensive process of beer-making. Budweiser owned by AB InBev, signed the largest ever pan-European solar power deal for its 14 breweries spread across Europe¹ in 2020, along with Heineken’s Sol brand committing to brewing with only 100% solar energy in the same year².

Hot spots such as Australia, Italy, Germany, Singapore, Belgium, the Netherlands and the U.S. are leading the charge when it comes to solarized breweries, and China is predicted to be ‘one to watch’ as the fastest growing market for beer consumption³.

The Moon Dog team selected Energis, a leading residential and commercial energy solutions company, to design a solar system that would reduce their reliance on using energy from the grid and lower their energy costs. Energis designed, installed and commissioned a 99.85 kW rooftop mounted solar system utilising 317 solar panels powered by FIMER’s PVS-100 inverter. Raman Chhabra, Director of Energis, said about FIMER’s technology:

“We chose FIMER for this installation because their inverters have a good track record in terms of reliability, technical support, and energy production, in both commercial and residential projects. The PVS-100 was also especially suited for the string sizing and other site-specific requirements for this project.”

Canning up solar power for greater energy production

“We are proud to have played a key role in helping this brewery reduce their carbon emissions and lower operating costs for years to come.” Explains Jason Venning, Country Manager for FIMER, Australia and New Zealand. “This is a great example of how FIMER’s PVS-100 high-powered string inverter, through its dual-stage topology, enables greater energy production and saves businesses more money over the lifetime of the system, thus enabling a faster return on investment.”

The addition of Aurora Vision, FIMER’s monitoring solution, allows Karl Van Buuren, Moon Dog Co-Founder and the rest of the team to monitor the breweries entire solar plant remotely. He said: “Our site, like many other food and beverage sites, is power-hungry, we have boilers, chill units and big packaging lines. Using FIMER’s monitoring solution allows us to see how much our solar is producing, which helps offset the large energy-using equipment on site. We can see what time of day we are generating the most solar energy, together with how much we are producing and consuming on a month-to-month basis.”

Since installation and commissioning, Moon Dog Brewing has generated over 110 MWh, saving approximately 20 tonnes of CO2 emissions each month. Moon Dog’s solar system inspired them to release a limited-edition beer named “the future is bright”, a solar-powered IPA (India Pale Ale).