Largest rooftop PV system in Latin America keeps PepsiCo plant fizzing

PepsiCo is one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies, with 22 diverse and beloved brands including Pepsi, Lay’s, Tropicana, Quaker and Gatorade. At PepsiCo’s bottling plant in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, beverage company Embotelladora de Sula, S.A. (EMSULA) utilizes specially designed blowing machines to craft its own bottles, which are filled with some of the world’s most popular carbonated beverages, water, juices and energy drinks.

However, EMSULA’s goals reach far beyond exceptional beverage packaging and distribution. It installed solar at the Honduran bottling plant in order to reduce power costs; better manage energy price fluctuations; be a more competitive, socially responsible company; and positively impact the environment by reducing its carbon footprint. The result? The largest rooftop power plant in Latin America.

Project details

Just one small bank of the 98 Sunny Tripower 24000TL-US inverters used to power the PepsiCo bottling plant.

Smartsolar, a leading developer of rooftop PV power plants in Central America, designed and installed a 3 MW decentralized system with 11,702 Jinko Solar modules and 98 SMA Sunny Tripower 24000TL-US three-phase, transformerless string inverters. The Sunny Tripower TL-US inverters provide optimal energy production and reliability, as well as increased financial returns.

“SMA was the right partner for the project because it is a leading global photovoltaic company that has demonstrated reliability based on its high-quality products and services,” said Roberto Larach, general director of EMSULA. “SMA also provides unparalleled technical expertise and support before, during and after project installation.”

Proinso, an SMA Authorized Distributor and one of Latin America’s largest equipment vendors, supplied the Sunny Tripowers for the project, which spans 366,000 square-feet of the plant’s rooftop. The EMSULA project is expected to generate 4,252,423 kWh of power annually, enough to offset 20 percent of the manufacturing facility’s energy consumption and provides the equivalent of planting 4.7 million trees to offset carbon emissions. For EMSULA, sunshine is making everything sweeter.