South African dough manufacturer Goosebumps, in a drive to improve its sustainability, has installed a 250 kW, 618-panel solar photovoltaic power plant at its Cape Town factory.
The plant provides almost 25% of the site’s electricity requirement.
The solar pant, installed by New Southern Energy, uses eight grid-tied inverters and 309 optimisers to reduce the factory’s operating costs.
Goosebumps says the plant will not only offset the tremendous power requirements of the factory, but will also help keep the cost of dough as stable as possible.
The company’s system is monitored by a master controller which works with a weather station to measure the solar radiation and panel temperature. All data is stored in a cloud-based system to ensure that the team of bakers have access to sufficient data at all times.
Goosebumps CEO Cilliers Viljoen, says “good things come to those who bake and we aim to keep making that process as convenient and cost effective as possible.”
New Southern Energy CEO David Masureik adds that the solar plant at Goosebumps makes “excellent” use of the company's roof space and will make a contribution to the industry for many years to come as the best quality materials were used in an efficient design.
The manufacturer says that small in-store bakeries have been under strain with the extremely time- and labour-intensive processes of dough mixing, often requiring bakers to start the process early in the morning to ensure baked goods reach the shelves, fresh for the early morning customers.
However, Goosebumps says that by combining the taste of traditional recipes with current technology, it has centralised the mixing process and now supplies bakeries across the country with frozen pre-mixed dough.
“In this way, each baker can add their unique stamp to the confectionary before it goes into the oven and enjoy an hour or two more sleep,” states Goosebumps.
Source: https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/bulk-dough-manufacturer-commissions-solar-plant-to-lower-costs-drive-sustainability-2021-03-12