A Bumper Crop from the Solar Orchard

April 21, 2014
Solar Orchard Image

In March of 2013 a solar array went online in Bridport, Vermont, just a few miles from our cidery.  The project was the work of a local farmer looking to diversify his land, AllEarth Renewables, a solar company, and us here at Woodchuck® Hard Cider.  You can read more from our first blog post about it here.

We were excited to be expanding our renewable energy portfolio beyond our Cow Power commitment.  We were hoping the newly dubbed “solar orchard” would produce enough power to account for 10% of our usage.  Well I guess you could say sunny days were ahead!

It was predicted in the first year it would produce 200,000 kWh (kilo-watt hours) of electricity.  In the 12 months from when the solar orchard went live in March 2013, it produced 248,000 kWh, a 24% increase over what was predicted!  All told, the Solar Orchard ended up accounting for close to 15% of our power.

[Tweet “FACT: In one year, 15% of the power for the Woodchuck Cidery came from #SolarEnergy!”]

Between that and the 25% of Cow Power, we are now 40% renewable!  It was exciting news for us, so we thought we would share it with you.  After all, without the fans demand for Woodchuck, where would we be?

If you would like to track our solar orchard, there’s an app for that.  Well, it’s actually a website.  It gives daily readings of solar activity and you can isolate certain months if you like.  It’s pretty cool and you can certainly tell which days were the sunny ones.  Click here to see the Woodchuck Solar Orchard activity.

[Tweet “You can track Woodchuck Cidery’s #Solar Orchard energy output on the web! http://bit.ly/1qQ7qST”]

Take a look at the production for March 2014:

Solar Power Grid Back to Blog