Goose Goes Solar

The Flying Goose Brew Pub & Grille receives about 766,000 kWh of free energy annually, delivered by the sun to its 3.1 acres at the Four Corners in New London.   It was only just recently, however, that we discovered that the time was right to begin harvesting the sun’s free resource.  Various incentive programs and lower prices on solar systems created an opportunity that combined to make really good sense to begin harvesting the sun’s irradiance to help power the Flying Goose’s operations.

Currently, we are offsetting about half of the fuel used to heat our hot water thanks to the new solar hot water collectors mounted on the roof over the dining room.  They will contribute about 100 million BTUs of heat annually!  (a “BTU” or a British Thermal Unit is the amount of energy required to heat a pound of water by 1 degree fahrenheit).

In addition, we completed a solar photovoltaic (“PV”) array near the hops garden, just outside the dining room windows in mid-November of 2011.  The PV system will generate about 25% of the electricity used by the Brew Pub each year. After three and a half months of being online, we have already produced over 7 Megawatt-Hours of Solar Electricity. With that  energy we could power over 240 houses for 1 day! We have also offset over 5 tons of carbon, the equivalent of 130 trees! And to think, we haven't even had the system operating in peak season with longer days of sunshine! Stay tuned for more information on our Solar PV Array as we work on updating this section of our website.

Over their expected lives, both the solar hot water and and PV systems will provide energy at a lower cost than the Flying Goose currently pays for its propane, heating oil and electricity.  And as energy prices keep rising, the savings will keep growing!

To explore whether solar makes sense for your home or business, we recommend that you reach out to our friends at Clean REsolution LLC who helped us with the design, financing and installation of both our solar hot water and solar PV systems.

For more information contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.