Solar Power Cells, Hot Water, Energy, Collectors

Breweries warm up to solar thermal heating

01.01.70

If you happened to be driving through Fremont this morning, you probably noticed something less than subtle happening at Hale’s Ales: a giant crane swinging a 3,000-pound tank up over the brewery’s roof. What you couldn’t see was the hole that Hale’s Ales cut in its roof to allow for a new 1,200-gallon tank to be dropped in —one part of the brewery’s new hybrid solar thermal hot water heating system.

It might seem odd to chop a hole in your roof in the middle of December, but Hale’s Ales founder and president Mike Hale wasn’t too concerned; he expects to see savings of over $1,000 per month ($15,000 per year) from the new system that relies on solar power, rather than natural gas, to heat the nearly 4,000 gallons of water the brewery uses per day.

“We use a lot of hot water here, so solar power just seemed like a natural place to get some of that free resource,” said Hale, who was previously using a gas-fueled steam boiler.

Hale said he was approached by Seattle-based solar engineering company Net Zero Impact with the idea, and once he saw the efficiencies of solar thermal heating, it “just made sense.

Source: Puget Sound Business Journal