SFF Project Summary
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Last updated: 23 February 2009
Project description
The project aims to improve the energy efficiency of the New Zealand Wine Industry by using industry data to establish
- An energy use benchmark system
- Best practice guidelines for energy conservation.
This will provide a solid platform for accessing improvement in energy efficiency, provide practical processes, and gauge individual and industry progress, resulting in continuous savings.
The issue/opportunity
Energy is an essential commodity for winemaking. Improving energy efficiency provides immediate economic and environmental gains.
Benchmarking raises the awareness of energy use and relative performance by and within the industry.
Savings of 15-20% or better may be achieved by wineries, based on findings by other industries.
The context/background
From a Sustainable Winegrowing perspective energy use, alternatives and encouraging conservation wherever possible needs to be addressed.
Currently energy drivers for energy intensity are not available for the range of wine industry processing plants and sites.
Methods
- Target onsite (winery) measurement and analysis of equipment usage to
- verify specific energy use drivers
- detail energy types and volumes of use
- Identify critical areas for energy efficiency
- Develop a predictive model of monthly energy consumption within wineries.
- Apply the data framework to update energy use benchmarks
- Establish an indicative set of practical applications demonstrating potential energy savings
- Develop guidelines for best practice energy efficiency.
Latest update
The project has refocused as a result of the first stage research findings. The Stage Two emphasis is now on auditing and diagnosing energy use parameters through the different stages of the winery process on a number of case study wineries. This information will then be used as the basis of both an energy measurement blueprint and an energy efficiency improvement evaluation tool for individual wineries.
The project has adapted the Californian "BEST" winery software for use in New Zealand Wineries and tested that in case study wineries. The model has been further refined after case study testing. A summary document of the most likely areas of energy savings has been produced as a result of the case studies and a literature search of international best practice in this area.
This tool will be showcased to the industry in regional workshops in November and December 2008.
Update
The project has refocused as a result of the first stage research findings. The Stage Two emphasis is now on auditing and diagnosing energy use parameters through the different stages of the winery process on a number of case study wineries. This information will then be used as the basis of both an energy measurement blueprint and an energy efficiency improvement evaluation tool for individual wineries.
A number of wineries have contributed to the latest project phase where we have been developing and testing a tool designed to benchmark wineries energy performance and identify areas for energy use efficiency improvement.
We have adopted a process based on the approach used by the Californians in their "BEST Winery" benchmarking and energy efficiency assessment tool. This is based on determining the volume of juice going through each of the separate stages of the wine making processes. There are a number of advantages to this approach not the least of which is that it is relatively easy from a data requirement point of view. We have visited a number of Marlborough and Hawkes Bay wineries to test its applicability and subsequently established a simplified energy benchmarking process. We are now confident that this is the least intrusive approach in terms of data requirements and are now at the point of refining the assessment tool, establishing the appropriate benchmarks and more importantly introducing the energy efficiency measures.
In interesting aspect of the BEST approach is that it compares and reports the individual wineries energy efficiency performance against an "optimal" rating for that winery not against a database or industry average. It is also able to report areas in which the most significant performance improvements can be made.
Update
The project has refocused as a result of the first stage research findings. The Stage Two emphasis is now on auditing and diagnosing energy use parameters through the different stages of the winery process on a number of case study wineries. This information will then be used as the basis of both an energy measurement blueprint and an energy efficiency improvement evaluation tool for individual wineries.
