Huntington Estate Winery

Huntington Estate approached SPS to develop a more efficient and sustainable solution for their Mudgee vineyard irrigation system. The original diesel powered bore pump could not extract the water fast enough to meet demand as well as keep up with aeration needs and, in addition was very expensive to run.

SPS Solar + Water designed and installed an 11.16kW ground mount solar array with a 5.5 KW Submersible Pumping Unit (with Variable speed drive) into the existing bore to solve the problem. This installation has a 3 year payback period and is saving Hunting Estate approximately $10,000 year.

During summer when demand is highest, the solar pumping system will support 10 hours of solar run time with the pump working at full speed for 6 of those hours. This will equate to an expected 120,000L – 150,000L of water moved utilizing the solar component only.

In winter, total solar run time will drop to 7hrs with 2hrs at full speed. This setup is capable of changing over to generator power to either maintain full pump speed or change of when no solar is available or as required to support higher demand and longer pumping hours.

Tim Stephens, owner of Huntington estate was so happy with the installation and its potential, he has gone on to commission a second, larger 87kW, grid connected ground mount solar system with SPS. This second system will produce an average of 360kWh per day and significantly reduce the power costs in their processing plant, offices and cellar door.

Tim Said
“It was a very simple process and its lead us to look at solar for all of our other operations…solar is no-brainer really, it’s taken me 10 years to get to this point and I am just kicking myself I didn’t get here earlier, pretty stupid really…

Huntington Estate Winery

Project: Commerical

Location: Mudgee

Connection: Off Grid Solar Diesel Hybrid

Array Size: 11.16kW

Water Volume: 16.8 Lt/sec 65M HEAD