It May Be Winter, But Two Businesses Are Going Green

Going green seems to be the up and coming trend of every person and business these days. But, for two businesses in Loudoun County it's been a gradual process of turning their businesses into a greener environment.

North Gate and Sunset Hills Vineyards, both located in Purcellville, have started to make their vineyards more green, not only with recycling and how they grow their grapes, but by installing solar paneling for their winery.

Sunset Hills' solar panels are one of the largest in Loudoun County, according to Jaclyn Slusher, events a accounting Manager at Sunset Hills, and with that power, they hope to be entirely off the grid.

"They will be powering the entire winery productions," Slusher said. "That includes, wine tasting barn, office, wine storage, and wine making facilities, including the equipment that is used to make the wine and the lighting in the building."

Mark Fedor, owner of North Gate Vineyard along with his wife, Vicki, have been living in Loudoun County for 16 years and purchased the 26 acre farm starting out as grape farmers in 2001. The winery portion of the farm opened up in 2007, but since then they haven't had a formal tasting room. With talks of constructing one, they decided to make a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified building.

"We wanted to do sustainable practicing for our vineyard and our business, and part of that, with being LEED certified, was to find some form of renewable energy," Fedor said. "Solar power seemed like something to explore and we decided to install some solar panels specifically for the building. We're hoping that it will power everything over the course of the year."

"We are doing a grid-tying system with NOVEC so we feed our power back into the grid and if we produce more than we use, we will get credits from NOVEC," Fedor said. "If we are using more than what the solar offsets, we give to NOVEC. This is called net metering, so over the course of the year we hope to net out to zero electric usage of the electric grid."

Not only do both wineries have solar panels, but they are going green in other ways. Sunset Hills uses "green" sprays on their plants, recycles in the tasting room and buys recycled paper, recycled plates and napkins. At North Gate, they collect rainwater to use for watering plants and irrigation. Since they are also under the LEED certification, they must also build a certain percentage with recycled materials. An example is they're piping is all recycled PVC, and they have designs that optimize less construction waste. Their roofing on existing buildings has a very high solar reflective index to keep heat out of the attic.

"I think it all ties together to having a sustainable farm," said Fedor. "We're farmers and we produce our product off our land and vineyard, and it just goes along with taking care of the land, and that's important to us. We also wanted to be a sort of role model to the wine industry and others in the county that you can actually do this and make an impact."

Both wineries want the final installation of the solar panels finished by the New Year. Sunset Hills has already had the solar panels installed and are going through the final inspections to have them active. North Gate will be installing theirs on Jan. 10, with a total of 96 solar panels that will produce 23 kilowatts of power, and they are provided by Solar4Leesburg.

"I think the best thing is that we're really helping the environment and we're taking everything we're doing from the agricultural side and the farming side and just trying to stay as green as possible," said Slusher.

If you'd like to learn more about these wineries go to: http://www.northgatevineyard.com or http://www.sunsethillsvineyard.com/

If you'd like to learn more about LEED go to: www.usgbc.org/LEED.