Solar photovoltaic installations in American and European winemaking facilities

Solar renewables in the form of solar thermal and photovoltaics (PVs) offer a complimentary solution to many winegrowing processes and in recent years have given rise to the concept of the 'solar winery'. Globally, there are an estimated 184,300 winemaking facilities that could economically utilise solar energy. Of this total to date only 293 have been positively identified has having a substantial active solar installation. This paper catalogues and presents the variation in PV technology and systems designed and installed in winemaking facilities throughout the world. The vast majority of solar systems are in either the USA (specifically California) or Europe. Both these regions represent almost 92% of all the catalogued solar wineries. The average size of a Californian winery installation is 169.1 kWp DC whilst the average size for a European installation is 77.8 kWp DC. Details of the mounting formats, module and inverter selections are presented along with average module area per kWp DC and power (kWhs) per year per kWp DC. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.