Graniterock Highlights How Sustainability Can Drive Efficiency, Reduce Costs And Garner Green Credentials With The Community.
by Therese Dunphy
For operations looking to lower energy costs, an investment in solar energy may generate goodwill as well as financial savings. “The community is very interested in it,” said Jon Erskine, Graniterock’s director of sustainability and geology. When community members learned of its first solar installation, they quickly began asking about other applications within the company. “It helped validate that the company is going this way, trying to become greener, and the community responded in a very positive way.”
Building on Early Success
Harnessing solar power began in 2018 at Graniterock’s Aromas Quarry, its flagship operation located near the Monterey Bay Area. The 1-megawatt array included 3,000 solar panels and enabled the operation to power 15% of its energy.
“We learned a lot,” Erskine said. “It saves money, and it’s green, which are two of our corporate objectives, so we wanted to maximize that.”
The next logical step? The company’s corporate headquarters. While Erskine notes the symbolism of that solar installation, it was also a pragmatic choice. The corporate headquarters was as a manufacturing facility before being purchased by Graniterock and converted into office space, creating some unique challenges.
Striving for Near Net Zero
As the team considered the headquarters, it focused on the concept of net zero, meaning that any energy used in the building would be offset by use of solar power. The goal was a 90% offset through a combination of boosting energy efficiencies and adding solar power.
Improvements were made in three main areas: including lighting, HVAC, and windows. “We upgraded everything to LEDs, so that reduced our energy usage a lot,” Erskine explained. “Then, we worked on the HVAC system because the air conditioning is a huge user of electricity. Although we couldn’t change the actual units themselves, we changed the controllers.”
The controllers feature adaptive software that monitors how the building heats up or cools down based on the outside temperature and adjusts the system according to the day’s weather. Fans were also installed on the two-story ceilings to continuously mix hot and cold air.
Next, the focus turned to windows. “Another really big thing was that our windows were single pane,” Erskine said. While the building’s East-West alignment and bank of south-facing windows was wonderful for natural light, it also meant that portions of the building also ran hot or cold, depending on the season. “We put window films on the windows,” he added. “You’d hardly even know these films are there, but it cuts down the amount of heat coming in.”
With these three simple changes, energy usage was reduced by nearly 60%. The rest of the offset was achieved through installation of solar panels on the roof. “People get intimidated by solar because it’s expensive, and rightly so, but there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of efficiencies,” Erskine said. “The cheapest thing is the kilowatt hour not burned.”
Although Graniterock considered solar at the headquarters a decade earlier, the additional time allowed the solar power industry to mature and prices to come down. By the time the net zero project became a reality, it not only made financial sense, but new ballasted systems allowed the load of the solar panels to be spread across the roof.
Since then, an additional 5-megawatt array has been added at the Aromas Quarry. It now generates enough power for 2,400 homes. Both sites are connected to the local power grid, with surplus energy being banked during the day, and electricity being pulled during night-time operations. “The pace itself doesn’t get down to zero, but it gets nearly to zero,” Erskine said.
For operators considering an investment in solar, he suggests coupling solar with a storage system to be able to bank energy and use it as needed, noting that vast majority of new systems in the area pair solar with storage. “In the middle of the day in California, you have more solar than you could use, but at night, you obviously don’t have solar,” he said. “You need storage to spread that amount of electricity.”
Cleaning the modules has also proven easier than anticipated, adding to the ease of ownership. “Solar is mature, it’s economical, and it works,” Erskine said. “It helps reduce one of our biggest costs, which is electricity.”
Therese Dunphy has covered the aggregates industry for nearly 30 years, while also serving multiple roles as a public official. As the owner of Stone Age Communications, she provides communications consulting services to help aggregate producers build stronger relationships within the communities they serve. She can be reached at [email protected].