South Africa Wine Research Projects

3. OENOLOGY RESEARCH PROJECT IN PROGRESS

WINERY ENERGY SAVINGS – REDUCING WINERY FUEL AND ELECTRICITY COSTS UWC BB 23-01 Prof Ben Bladergroen, South African Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry Energy

Storage and Fluid Treatment Centre, University of the Western Cape Project is co-funded by the Department of Science and Innovation Start date: 2023

AIM AND INDUSTRY RELEVANCE: Wineries are unique in their electrical demand breakdown, seasonality, and relatively high use of diesel generators. This requires a unique PV + energy storage solution to get the optimal re turn on investment, not just a standard PV + Battery storage solution used by many installers. The research team believes that a significant portion of storage should be thermal storage (cold storage) rather than the more popular Li-ion battery. Locally developed HOMER software can be used to guide the optimisation process. The project team will install dedicated measurement devices to collect energy consumption data. The devices for power consumption data acquisition can be expensive, and the intent is that the project team will fabricate and implement a cost-effective infrastructure. The studies will consider electrical consumption data, municipal tariff structures, location, and space available for PV and energy storage requirements. The off-the-shelf devices needed to create a twelve-month power consumption profile can be expensive. The research team’s project partner will build, test and commercialise a cost-effective data acquisition device available to wineries considering an invest ment in alternative power production.

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SOUTH AFRICA WINE RESEARCH 2024