Media. 21 Jan 2021
The future is bright with solar-powered beer
Forget the beer goggles, settle into the spectacles of a sunny disposition and thank whatever gods may be for beer, solar panels and sunshine. That’s what Melbourne’s Moon Dog Brewing has done with the installation of a near 100 kW solar system atop their brewpub. Inspired by the savings made on emissions and electricity bills, the brewers have released a limited edition solar-powered IPA.
Image: Fimer
If beer were not essential to life then why does it inherit its colour from the sun? It’s a deep question, or at least, schooner-deep. But when it comes to Melbourne brewer Moon Dog Brewing, the liquid gold is crafted using sunlight itself. The Brewer recently saw a 99.85 kW rooftop mounted solar system installed alongside a Fimer’s PVS-100 inverter atop the brewery.
Unfortunately for everyone, the amber nectar doesn’t make itself. Heroes are required, and these independent brewers answered the call when they decided to open Moon Dog World, a new brew pub or “adult theme-park”, in October 2019.
Conscious of wanting to reduce their emissions, Moon Dog asked Energis to design and install a solar system that would reduce their reliance on energy from the grid and cut their electricity bill. Energis then went ahead and installed a 317-panel array along with a single PSV-100 inverter.
According to the Director of Energis, Raman Chhabra, the PSV-100 was chosen because it was “especially suited for the string sizing and other site-specific requirements of this project.”
Moreover, Moon Dog Co-Founder, Karl Van Buuren, said Fimer’s Aurora Vision monitoring solution allowed him and the rest of the team to monitor their entire solar array remotely. “Our site, like many other food and beverage sites, is power-hungry, we have boilers, chill units and big packaging lines…We can see what time of day we are…generating the most solar energy, plus see reporting on how much we are producing and consuming on a month to month basis.”
According to this monitoring, Moon Dog Brewing has generated over 110 MWh of solar energy since its installation. Now, this is something to yell home about whether you’ve on the yellow yelling stuff or not. And so, inspired by their solar system, Moon Dog released a limited-edition beer in 2020 called “the future is bright”, a. message we can all cheers to now that we have finally been able to discard of 2020 like a stubby in the street.
The solar-powered beer is an IPA, a robust beer in taste and colour that perfectly represents the sunlight used to make it. Frothie-lovelies don’t come much lovelier than this.
Reference: https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/01/21/the-future-is-bright-with-solar-powered-beer/
