Case Study

Carlton & United Breweries

Watch the Carlton & United Breweries Solar Journey

Project Size:

9.8MW Rooftop Solar PPA

Project Summary

CUB engaged Smart to own, operate and maintain 3 solar PV systems across their brewery sites at Yatala (QLD), Wulkuraka (QLD) and Abbotsford (VIC). This was part of CUB’s commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy across their manufacturing sites.

Smart was engaged for the project via a 20 year PPA where CUB agreed to pay for all of the electricity generated by the facilities over the term. At the time of executing this agreement, this was the largest behind the meter PPA project in Australia.

The CUB project was a challenging one. Constructing the projects safely on live production sites with no disruption was a key focus that had to be well considered throughout the delivery process. This included the installation of permanent guardrail and walkway across all rooftops that solar panels were going to be installed on. This was not only important for construction but also future operation and maintenance that would be required over the 20 year term of the agreement.

Key Project Stats

Delivered with no upfront cost

Yatala is the 5th largest rooftop system in Aus.

Complex system design and engineering

Total of 13 connection points

The sites ranged in age from over 100 years old to brand new, this brought its own challenges from a structural and buildability point of view. Extensive structural engineering assessment needed to be conducted in order to understand where solar could be installed and which areas of the site were going to require maintenance over the 20 year period. This stemmed into countless safety in design reviews to ensure the CUB site teams were comfortable with how the system will be integrated into the site without any disruption both now and into the future.

The sites also contained many different connection points. This meant that we had to design and construct the system in order to match loads across the site which meant numerous inverter station set ups, connections to main switchboards and integrated grid protection across the site.

All of these challenges were overcome and resulted in a well balanced system offsetting different loads across the sites operations.