Ice cream company BICO Limited is benefitting from thousands of dollars in savings on its electricity bill after installing and commissioning a photovoltaic system.
Executive chairman Edwin Thirlwell said last week that the installation, which took place last August, was alreadying saving BICO eight per cent of its electricity costs and that management was examining the possibility of installing a similar system on the roof of the Harbour Cold Store.
Thirlwell said the system installed had 181 kilowatt capacity, but that his company was producing an average of 150 kilowatts.
“It’s a drop in the ocean to what we use and we are hoping that we may get a chance and there will be another programme where we will have a low cost loan to put a similar facility on the cold store. We have got a roof over there where we can still put solar panels,” he said.
“But this kind of expenditure has to be gauged so that we can do it in a way that we can manage and that’s what we are going to do. So it’s worth doing, it’s not for the faint-hearted, it’s not easy, but it does work. We have done it and we will certainly do it again and of course the good thing is that the solar panels are getting cheaper by the day almost.
“The pay back on this one was three years, which was pretty good. But you have to have the confidence to put the money out,” he added.
When their solar panel system was launched last year, BICO officials said it was expected to cut their electricity bill by $20 000. The company has installed 10 000 square feet of solar panels. BICO undertook the project using a $1.5 million loan from the Smart Energy Fund, which is administered by the Enterprise Growth Fund Limited. (SC)
