New Zealand Creamery’s 2.16 MWp solar PV system was designed to maximise the available roof area, with the expectation that the power generated would be consumed by the facility’s substantial daytime factory load.

As a dairy processing and cold-storage facility, the site has significant industrial refrigeration requirements. Cold storage alone represents a near-constant load of approximately 30 kW, operating 24 hours a day, while factory demand is considerably higher during production hours. This combination of dairy processing, cold storage and continuous refrigeration made the facility particularly well suited to industrial rooftop solar, with high daytime self-consumption of onsite solar generation.

Current estimates indicate that approximately 2 MWh of potential solar generation is now curtailed each day.

Changes in the factory’s load profile now leave part of the 2.16 MWp system’s potential generation unused. Solaren is studying whether adding battery storage to commercial solar could recover some of that curtailed energy for evening and overnight refrigeration. The proposed capacity will be assessed against the available solar surplus and the cold-storage load, so the next stage is shaped by how the facility operates today.