Nepal’s two major breweries go solar

Nepal’s two major breweries — Raj Brewery and Yak Brewing — have installed rooftop solar systems at their respective factories which is expected to reduce their carbon footprints, dependency on diesel, and the impact of dry season power outages.

On Friday, Raj Brewery and Simple Energy connected the 500kW Solar Rooftop Project to the country’s grid, which is expected to generate 844 MWh of clean energy annually.

According to the press release by Simple Energy, it is Nepal’s largest solar rooftop project and the first solar rooftop project for Nepal’s brewery industry. The energy from the solar plant installed at the brewery’s Nawalparasi-based factory rooftop will be used for its industrial operations while the excess energy will be distributed through the national grid.

The distribution will be based on a net metering system that allows household and commercial producers to sell the excess electrical energy they aren’t using through the grid.

Raj Brewery is a company under the Jawalakhel Group of Industries, which commenced operation in 2018 and produces and markets Warsteiner and Budweiser beers in Nepal.

Simple Energy Pvt. Ltd. (SEPL) is a Joint Venture of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) company InfraCo Asia and Saral Urja Nepal (SUN) that specialises in developing rooftop solar projects at industrial roofs. SEPL has also developed solar rooftop projects for Yak Brewing Co. and Bhudeo Khadya Udhyog (Hulas Foods) and plans to build 8 MW solar rooftop grid-connected projects across Nepal, focusing on the commercial and industrial (C&I) market segment in its first phase.

Yak Brewing — the producer of Barahsinghe beer — released an Instagram reel yesterday stating that it has installed 820 solar panels on its rooftop at their Kurintar-based plant, each panel with a 660W capacity — a total installed capacity of 540 kWh — that can produce approximately 820 MWh of clean energy annually allowing it to reduce 740 tonnes of CO₂ emissions per year.

The current installation allows Yak Brewing to power 100% of the brewery’s total energy consumption during day time and supplies any excess energy back to the grid. 

Yak Brewing aims to become carbon neutral by 2025.

 

 

 

 

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The company’s other sustainability measures include the deployment of VAM (vapor absorption machine) — generated by non-fossil fuel boilers to chill the water instead of electricity, and a CO₂ recovery plant — to capture otherwise lost CO₂ from the fermentation process and store it for later use during the bottling process.