Winery works to reduce energy costs

Part of one of California's most famous industries is seeking to overcome one of the State's greatest obstacles to profitability--energy costs:

California wineries now have an easy-to-use, computer-based tool and a handbook to help them reduce energy and water costs, thanks to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Fetzer Vineyards, with whom the lab worked to develop the tool.

California grapes yield about 500 million gallons of wine per year. California is home to more than 1,000 wineries which contribute some $33 billion to the state’s annual economy.

“BEST (Benchmarking and Energy and Water Savings Tool) Winery” compares the performance of a target winery to a similar reference winery. The reference winery is very efficient, using state-of-the-art commercially available energy and water control technologies.

After evaluating how the target winery compares to the reference winery, the user can view the tool’s inventory of available efficient practices and technologies to select those that will save money, energy and water. BEST Winery is available as an Excel spreadsheet that can be run on any PC operating Windows 2000 or higher.

The Public Interest Energy Research Program of the California Energy Commission supported development of the tool, which is geared toward small-to-medium-scale wineries. It is available for free to all California wineries.