Highland Brewing switches to solar power

That next bottle or pint of Highland Gaelic Ale was brewed with 100 percent solar power.

Highland Brewing, Asheville's first craft brewery, has switched to a solar system, generating all the power needed to make its craft beers and to operate the plant. It's the latest in a growing number of breweries using solar power or alternative fuels.

Sierra Nevada has solar at its Mills River and Chico, California, breweries. New Belgium is looking at a solar system for its West Asheville brewery and uses solar and alt-fuel at its Colorado brewery.

At Highland, any extra solar juice can be sold back to Duke Energy Progress, company president Leah Wong Ashburn said. The savings will be substantial, she said.

"I think it will be several thousand dollars a month off the power bill," she said. There are also state and federal tax credits for using solar power, she said.

Highland first considered going solar in 2012, and first looked at an outside company operating the system. But eventually, Highland acquired 1,045 solar panels itself and had them installed on the brewery roof at 12 Old Charlotte Highway. The brewery then upgraded its electrical system to safely plug in the new system.

Sierra Nevada began using solar power in 2006 at its original brewery in Chico and has 10,500 panels there, spokesman Bill Manley said. In Mills River, Sierra has 2,200 panels and two capstone microturbines using methane biogas, a byproduct of waste water treatment. Together they produce one megawatt of AC power, he said.

New Belgium, which will open its West Asheville brewery late this year, also is "actively looking into" solar use there, spokesman Bryan Simpson said

New Belgium uses more than 1,200 solar panels and methane captured from wastewater treatment methane at its Fort Collins, Colorado, brewery. The two systems produce 19 percent of its needed electricity, Simpson said.

"We like solar as a viable renewable energy," he said.