Food Processing Facilities
Scale’s advanced microgrids make food processing facilities resilient against rising electricity reliability and price risks, with fast, automatic transitions to backup power and optimized cost savings.
Rising Electricity Risks
The food and beverage industry puts a premium on electricity reliability, as disturbances to production can result in costly impacts like spoilage of product as well as ingredients, compromised food safety, extended downtime for equipment recalibration, and more.
Average US outage hours are at their highest level in over a decade, with almost every region of the country experiencing a year with 8 or more hours of outages in recent memory.
Almost 80% of outages are caused by severe weather events, and the number of these outages have doubled over the last decade.
Food processing facilities can incur costs of tens or even hundreds of thousand of dollars per hour of downtime - comparable to losses in manufacturing and chemicals industries.
And as operations become increasingly automated, even losing power for a few seconds can incur major costs as sensitive processes are disrupted, batches are lost, and equipment must be cleaned and recalibrated.
Utility rates are skyrocketing, far outpacing inflation with increases of over 25% increase nationally over the past 5 years - and over 50% in the mid-Atlantic, northeast, and California.
The fastest-growing components are demand-based charges (including capacity charges) and fixed costs, challenging traditional energy cost management strategies.
Redefining Resilience
Scale’s advanced microgrids provide fast, automatic transitions to backup power while locking in lower electricity costs, making food processing facilities resilient to today’s growing energy risks.
Optimized Cost Savings
Lock in fixed, lower energy costs and adapt to changing rate structures
Enhanced Reliability
Fast transitions to backup power protect your critical operations from disruption
Faster Time-To-Power
Power new facilities or expansions ahead of utility service to avoid delays
Advanced Microgrids
Scale’s advanced microgrids are integrated systems of on-site energy infrastructure, with multiple distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar, battery storage, and generators, and optimal dispatch via customized controls.
Solar
Typically the cheapest source of kilowatt-hours, solar arrays lower energy costs and improve sustainability by generating zero-emission power from the sun.
Pairing solar with optimized battery storage is key to maximizing its value, particularly where regulations have reduced the value of solar-only systems.
Battery
With or without solar, battery storage lowers energy costs by reducing grid use during the hours of the day, month, and year when utility prices are highest.
Batteries can also provide near- instantaneous transitions to backup power, eliminating disruptions to operations when the grid goes down.
Controls
Microgrid controls optimize dispatch of each resource to maximize value, provide fast, automatic transitions to backup power, and enable speed-to-power for facilities without grid access.
Scale's industry-leading expertise allows us to configure these controls in-house, customizing them to the specific needs of each customer facility.
Generator
Fuel-based generators provide a source of unlimited-duration backup power for extended outages. Generators also provide prime power to off-grid systems.
Scale can integrate existing backup generators or new, low-emission natural gas gensets we design and commission in-house for maximum reliability.
Scale’s BYOP Speed-to-Power Solutions
Scale’s "Bring Your Own Power" (BYOP) offerings provide a solution to multi-year utility capacity delays, with microgrids that provide faster, ultra-reliable power for manufacturing sites that currently lack a grid connection or need more power at their existing grid-tied facility.
As detailed in this white paper, we have a proven track record of delivering generator-based prime power solutions as well as advanced, multi-resource microgrids that also incorporate solar and storage.
Learn more.
The next level of on-site energy.
Backup Generator
Advanced Microgrid
Solar
Full Lifecycle Support
Scale provides advanced microgrids under a microgrid-as-a-service model, under which we take full responsibility for the entire project lifecycle, from design and construction through long-term ownership and operations.
This service model enables manufacturing industry customers to eliminate up-front costs and minimize risks by leveraging Scale’s industry-leading expertise, proprietary software platform, and capital resources to ensure successful advanced microgrid projects.
Design
Build
