Spotlight on Award Winners: Jackson Family Wines Tesla Stationary Energy Storage System

“Jackson Family Wines’ commitment to sustainability goes one step further by successfully piloting energy storage. They are on the forefront of the intelligent energy system revolution. This is a great pilot to be studied and replicated at more wineries in the future.”

 Jackson Family Wines is a family-owned wine company in Santa Rosa, California. In 2015, JFW installed 21 Tesla Energy stationary energy storage systems for a total of 4.2 megawatts of storage capacity. JFW was among the first companies in the nation to collaborate with Tesla on this initiative designed to reshape the way energy is managed for more sustainable operations.

 JFW has had a strategy for energy efficiency since 2008, when the company began baselining energy usage. Through energy efficiency initiatives alone, the company has documented savings greater than $15 million. They also reduced the energy and water required to produce a gallon of wine. Once these energy efficiency savings were realized and each winery was as efficient as possible, JFW committed to reinvesting the savings in onsite renewable energy.

After agreeing to commitments, JFW and Tesla Energy began systematically evaluating all potential winery locations for peak electricity demand. They also right sized the battery systems to shave as much peak as possible, maximizing energy usage efficiency and helping to stabilize the local electric grid.

JFW was the first wine company to install Tesla’s stationary energy storage systems, and is currently one of Tesla’s largest installations. The batteries are installed at six wineries throughout California, including Kendall-Jackson in Sonoma and Napa, La Crema and Stonestreet in Sonoma, and Carmel Road in Monterey. The Tesla battery packs help offset some of the most costly — and energy intensive — wine-making practices such as refrigeration and cooling, compressed air, lighting, and process water treatment. The Tesla battery packs are expected to reduce electricity costs across the pilot wineries by up to 10%.

The company’s sustainable energy management goal is to source 50% of annual winery electricity usage from onsite renewables by 2021. The Tesla solution contributes to JFW offsetting about 40% of annual winery electricity usage from onsite renewable generation and storage. The installations work in conjunction with the 6.5 megawatts of onsite solar generation installed last year across eight JFW wineries in California that now generate 9 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually. JFW says that the integration with the Tesla battery systems will result in about $1.5 million in savings each year.

This partnership demonstrates that energy storage is a viable option for wineries to provide significant cost savings. As a result of the deployment, and the subsequent performance data collection and analysis, JFW will be able to explore the development of self-sustaining microgrids that use on-site solar systems to generate electricity during the day, and run their wineries at night using excess solar electricity stored in the Tesla Energy batteries.

  This article is sponsored by Jackson Family Wines