Good practice:

Biomass boiler + rooftop PV plant in a winery “Bodegas López Morenas”

López Morenas has been a family winery since 1943, however, the cellar in Fuente del Maestre was established in 2013.
The winery has been one of the leading wine manufacturers in the region and the third most important in Spain. The winery produces around 100.000 million litres per year. Where the main product is “Cava”.
Before 2015, the winery had an old diesel boiler which generated 2.800 MWh of thermal energy, in the filtering and pasteurization process of the wine and juice. As a result, the engineering consultancy Tentubio Renewable Energy developed a study for the winery, where they assured 80% of savings in the consumption by changing the boiler.
They suggested a replacement of the boiler to a more efficient one, to install a biomass steam boiler with a heat production capacity of 1500 kW.
The biomass installation was carried out by a multi-fuel steam boiler and storage with a capacity of 75 t.
As soon as the factory had broken even with the biomass, they decided to expand and spend a budget amount of 9.000.000 €. This investment, not only had taken different actions such as renewing the winery equipment and expanding the production but also, they installed a 400 kW rooftop photovoltaic system.
This installation was carried out at the beginning of 2020, achieving their first results by the summer of 2020.
The solar PV plant will be used for self-consumption of the winery without battery storage.

The fundings used to develop both installations were private.
The biomass boiler had a total invest of 250.000 € with an investment cost per installed KW of 167 €/kW, while the PV installation was 260.000 € with a ratio per KW of 650 €/kW.

Biomass 1.500 kW.
PV 400 kW.
The savings that the winery has achieved with this installation are around 80%, being evidence of success.
The winery is not only reaching and improving their facilities with the new technology but also, they are decreasing the carbon footprint dismissing the CO2 emissions in 859,6 t/year.

The main challenge that the winery had encountered had been the use of the wastes that the region generates to produce heat.
Creating a link between different enterprises to supply raw material (olive stone) for the biomass steam boiler.

The winery López Morenas has been always at the forefront of the sector by trying to create synergies with other companies in the region.
This means that the impact which RE installation has, will not only affect the winery, but it will also strengthen the links the cellar has with other companies in the region.
Also, the boiler has a multi-fuel feeding, in which the winery has decided to use olive stone to reduce the wastes in the area.
Another company (TROIL Vegas Altas) that is strongly linked with RES in the area, it is providing the raw materials. Aiming to establish a circular economy model.
It is important to recognise that renewables are linked to high investment, however, the winery achieved it with an intelligent strategy by phase installing.
Firstly, they installed the biomass boiler and once they had broken even on their investment they had to install the rooftop photovoltaic plant as a second phase.