Spier Boosts Solar Capacity With New Panels On Tasting Room And Hotel Roofs

During July, two new sets of solar panels – measuring a total of 638 m2 in size – were installed on the roofs of our Tasting Room and the Spier Hotel. The new panels will boost our power generation capacity by 111.6kWp – roughly half the farm’s existing capacity – and will generate more than 180,000kW of electricity a year.

This will result in an annual saving of 174 463kg of carbon dioxide emissions that would have otherwise been caused by fossil fuel-generated electricity, a saving that is equivalent to:

• The greenhouse gas emissions from 27 passenger vehicles driven over the course of a year
• The CO2 emissions from the electricity used by 22 houses each year

“Carbon emissions from electricity generation is one of climate change’s biggest culprits,” explains Spier’s General Manager, Joep Schoof. “Installing new panels at our Hotel and Tasting Room is part of our commitment to helping change that.”

The new panels join our farm’s eight other solar installations, which already provide 218.23kWp of electricity capacity, generating more than 375,000kW of electricity a year.

The metrics explained:

• kW = kilowatt: the unit used to measure the amount of electrical power generated
• kWp = kilowattpeak: the unit used to measure how much power a solar panel generates when conditions are sunny