Printing plate manufacturer saves €465,000 in electricity costs thanks to the Centrosolar Solution Centre
Industrial companies can consume the power from a photovoltaic system almost entirely themselves, even without a storage system. A manufacturer of printing plates in northern Germany uses over 80 per cent of the power from its PV system itself. The system was planned by the Centrosolar Solution Centre. In doing so, the company is set to save approximately €465,000 over the course of 26 years, assuming an increase in electricity prices of four per cent per year. Such high rates of self-consumption are possible in industrial buildings that have a high base load during the day and where the PV system covers the times between power needs and power production.
COE (Carl Ostermann Erben) GmbH, based in Stuhr near Bremen, Germany, had a 94.5 kWp PV system from Centrosolar installed on the company’s roof in May 2013. The company manufactures printing plates and employs 42 people. Its operating hours from 8 am to 6 pm overlap to a large extent with those in which the PV system produces power. “The first few weeks after commissioning showed us that on sunny days, we could consume up to 100 per cent of the power from the PV system ourselves. We only feed power into the grid on weekends when the machines aren’t running,” comments Andreas Segelken, Managing Director at COE. This amounts to an average self-consumption quota of 80 per cent, and all this without a storage system. “Industrial buildings with the appropriate roof surfaces can achieve a far higher self-consumption rate than the 30 per cent that is common in individual homes. Self-consumption of the power is useful in many industries, including the catering industry or in public institutions,” explains Dr Axel Müller-Groeling, member of Centrosolar AG’s Board of Directors.
The system in Bremen consists of 386 S-Class Professional modules from Centrosolar installed on the east and west roof areas. The roof is covered with trapezoidal sheet metal with a pitch of seven degrees. The system is expected to produce 77,980 kWh of electricity each year. The degree of self-sufficiency indicates what percentage of the consumed power can be generated independently using the PV system and does not have to be obtained from the energy provider. Here, the degree of self-sufficiency is 36 percent.
Centrosolar launched the Solution Centre particularly for industrial companies. The Solution Centre provides advice to industrial companies by creating individual power consumption and generation analyses and using them to design, plan and implement customized PV systems Self-consumption of the solar energy is almost always the best option due to the increasing costs for purchasing electricity from the grid. It is a particularly attractive option for industrial companies with the corresponding base load.
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About Centrosolar
With locations in Hamburg, Paderborn and Kempten in the Allgäu, Centrosolar AG is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Munich-based Centrosolar Group AG. The Centrosolar Group is an international company with over 700 employees and annual sales of more than €189 million (2012 preliminary results). All of the subsidiaries offer products and solutions for converting solar energy into electricity. The product range includes photovoltaic (PV) systems, solar energy storage systems, mounting systems and project planning for PV systems in the megawatt range. The Centrosolar Group operates a panel production facility in Wismar, Germany with an annual capacity of 350 MWp. Subsidiaries are located in Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the U.S. and Canada.
