Bozeman Brewing Company

Founded in 2001, Bozeman Brewing Company is one of the pioneers of the Montana microbrewing community. Owners Todd and Lisa Scott have taken great care in every choice they have made with their company to celebrate the wonderful community they serve. The idea of adding solar had been on their mind for some time, so when Harvest Solar approached them in the spring of 2015, they jumped at the opportunity. Utilizing the USDA Rural Energy for America Program, Harvest was able to help “The Bozone” write a successful grant application to help pay for the system.

Our Strategy

This system was designed to maximize the potential power density of the available flat roof space. The result is a 47.3kW array that offsets about 40% of the Bozeman Brewing Company’s needs. The chosen racking is a ballasted system, which is held down by weight and requires no penetrations in the rubber membrane roofing surface. Because of the addition of this weight to the building, Harvest Solar worked closely with Salve-Tech Engineering on the design.  It was determined that the truss structure would need to be fortified to hold the weight, so the Harvest Team rolled up their sleeves and got to work reinforcing the truss structure in the attic of the building.

End Result

This was truly a collaborative effort. Bozeman Brewing is committed to preserving the community they hold dear and they look forward to future expansions as their business continues to grow and thrive.

System Details

System Size: 47.3 kW

System Specs: 
Solar Module – 182 Canadian panels
Inverter – Two 28kW Solectria Inverters Racking – Aerocompact
Monitoring – SolrenView

Location: Bozeman

Install Date: September 2015

Bozeman Brewing has always thought of ourselves as being sustainably oriented. The real issue was the details and the costs. It had to make sense from a financial perspective as well as an environmental one. With guidance from Harvest Solar, we were able to obtain a USDA “REAP” grant and guarantee financing from our bank to begin the project. Looking over our historic energy use from our power bills, they were able to show a 30-40% reduction of our energy dependence on the power company. They were also able to show a 7 to 8 year ROI. This is generally outside my comfort zone for an ROI, but with the solar panels having a 25-year guarantee, this meant that we would have 17 or 18 years of free power. The fact that energy costs will not be decreasing for the foreseeable future made this decision a no brainer.I look forward to sunny days, power savings and working with Harvest Solar and Thunderbird Development on future projects.

– Todd Scott, Owner