Clean energy for Coca-Cola in South Africa

Coca-Cola is relying on solar energy in the construction of a water bottling plant in South Africa. This fits in perfectly with the company's green overall strategy and makes it more independent from the public grid. The photovoltaics specialists from Lapp Kabel and IBC Solar supplied the necessary modules, components and a monitoring system, and also commissioned the system.

A new water bottling plant was set up for the Coca-Cola brand Valpré in Heidelberg, South Africa. Because the nationwide power supply in South Africa is still under development in parts, Coca-Cola wanted to take the "safe approach" with the new bottling plant. In order to prevent production downtimes in the event of a power cut and reduce their dependance on the public power grid, the company management chose to install their own solar power system. Lapp Group Southern Africa, a company of the Lapp Group, worked with its partner IBC Solar to develop, install and connect cables for a tailored solar power system for this purpose.

The system has a nominal output of 30 kWp and generates around 50,000 kilowatt hours of power per year. It was designed so that the capacity can be increased to 90 kWp. The system saves 29.5 tons of CO2 per year.

Products in use
The standard networked solar cable ÖLFLEX® Solar XLS was used to connect the solar modules. This cable is used most frequently in temperature ranges from -40 to +100°C. The cable is normally mounted on flat and pitched roofs and field systems for wiring solar modules together, as well as connecting the individual rows of modules and the inverter.

The low-resistance solar connector EPIC® guarantees greater efficiency, boasting a particularly low electrical resistance and increased service life.

The construction of the Heidelberg photovoltaic system was also planned in a targeted manner. In cooperation with Lapp, SAR SA installed a special supporting frame for the solar panels. The modules then only had to be "clicked" in and fixed in place with end fittings, which shortens the installation time considerably.

Lapp Southern Africa also offered its customer all-round support. In order to ensure that the system generates high returns over the long term, Lapp will be assuming monitoring and regular maintenance duties. With an automatic remote plant monitoring system, potential technical problems can be detected quickly and failures prevented.

The customer
The Coca-Cola AG is represented at around 70 locations, including 25 in manufacturing, nationwide presence. In Germany more than 70 products for the German market can be filled. The best-known products include the classic Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero, Fanta, Sprite, Mezzo Mix.

Web: www.coca-cola.com
Mail: info(at)coca-cola.de