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A New Kind of Green Beer

Cold storage uses hot new technology.

By Debra Hazel | Updated on June 05, 2009

The hot sun normally is a sworn enemy of cold beer. However, a Budweiser storage facility in Antioch, CA, actually is using the sun to keep its product cold, courtesy of an array of solar panels that greatly reduces the power bill.

The 110,000-square-foot Budweiser Cold Beer Storage building in Contra Costa County, CA is being powered in part by a 416-kilowatt solar installation on the roof that has begun to produce returns in its first year of operation, remarkable for a building whose focus is refrigeration.

“A cold storage facility traditionally uses so much power that it’s difficult to offset,” says Paul Townsend, founder of Perpetual Power, LLC, the San Francisco-based company that builds, installs and supports solar electric generators. The company created the array, using Mitsubishi solar panels.

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