Agnieszka Łopata has a passion for brewing. She began home-brewing in 2009, won a Master Brewer award, completed a university course in brewing, and became a professional brewer in 2013.
The craft brewery she opened with business partner Andrzej Czech – URSA MAIOR – is located in Uherce Mineralne in the picturesque Bieszczady region of Poland, and has established itself as a prominent craft brewery using innovative and traditional ingredients. Their range includes organic beers made with wild herbs for bittering, in place of the more widely used hops.
URSA MAIOR is committed to low carbon production, minimum waste, and maximum use of solar power during the brewing of its five hundred thousand litre annual output.
The brewery has a solar array of almost 40kWp and stores energy into a Pylontech lithium battery bank which has a capacity of 100kWh.
The system was installed by Enerp – who specialise in static solar-based energy installations for commercial and domestic applications. Enerp had already provided wildlife cameraman Andrzej Czech with an off grid energy system for his cabin deep in the forest. Andrzej was so impressed that he made the decision to invest in green energy for the brewery.
3-phase AC is required to power the industrial processes such as heating the mash water and controlling the fermentation temperature. Three Victron Quattros each rated at 15kVA and configured for 3-phase supply are AC coupled to two Fronius Symo 20.0-3-M 20kW inverters. In this arrangement, the Quattro’s ‘Limit feed-in’ ability controls the Fronius Inverters over Modbus TCP integration – preventing excess power from being sent to the grid in accordance with the export limit.
Data communication between all cross-manufacture devices is enabled by a Cerbo GX which also uploads real time data to Victron Energy’s free-to-use remote management platform VRM. VRM provides engineering access to the system so that its behaviour can be observed, and settings can be modified and tweaked remotely.
One of the greatest benefits of commercial Energy Storage Systems (ESS) – apart, obviously, from the reduced cost per unit of energy! – is the security of having an uninterruptible power supply. When goods or consumables are being manufactured, a grid failure at just the wrong moment can be extremely costly in terms of spoiled raw materials, damaged machinery and lost labour costs. There have been two grid failures since this installation was completed – neither had the slightest impact on the brewing process.
Energy in a box
The cost of grid energy and a desire for energy security is driving interest in ownership of private 3-phase solar energy installations for businesses. For companies with limited internal space, and for those with near-continuous production who cannot contemplate days of on-premises rewiring, containerised power is the answer.
Bartłomiej Choroszczyński from Enerp says: For us, containerised energy systems are the right way to help companies with energy transformation within our dynamically changing energy market. Now every company needs renewables to balance their costs. Using energy storage systems allows for increasing independence from the grid.
Peak shaving
For many growing businesses who use a lot of energy during certain industrial processes – but only for a limited period of time, the ability to cover those peak power demands by adding power from their own battery storage on top of the grid power allows their company to continue trading without upgrading a limited grid power supply. The cost of upgrade can be huge; sometimes, owing to infrastructure limitations, it won’t even be possible.
Power Assist is a feature unique to Victron Energy. Whenever energy demand from the AC source (grid or generator) goes above a predetermined current level, the Inverter/charger will add battery power to the AC source to meet the high demand without exceeding the grid (generator) limit.
Successful businesses soon outgrow their initial grid connection. Energy Storage Systems meet their expanding demand for energy – allowing the business to continue to grow secure in the knowledge that they will have sufficient energy capacity to meet high-consumption factory processes.
Containerised ESS – see it at Poland’s Battery Forum Trade Fair
Enerp have built a 20 foot open door energy container for customer demonstration and for use at public exhibitions. Its 3-phase AC output is provided by 6 x Quattro 15 kVA Inverter/Chargers drawing from a 200 kWh Pylontech US5000 battery bank. Visitors will see an EV plugged into a Victron EV charging station NS. The unit is capable of running huge loads and offers both AC and DC distribution.
Bartłomiej says : We have an actual installation using one of these containers at a company called CONCEPT – which is general contractor. We travel with a 135kVA model to promote this kind of solution at trade fairs in Poland. It is configured to work with a combustion generator and solar/wind installations and is designed to provide peak shaving, renewables balancing and to provide backup power for the company.
Enerp will be present at Battery Forum, which takes place on 22 May, exhibiting their commercial ESS built using Victron Energy core devices. You can find them on stand B2.23
