Multi-objective optimisation for microbrewery retrofitting

In a highly competitive retail market, many microbreweries have attempted to maximise profits and decrease energy consumption through retrofitting their operations with renewable energy. This paper develops an optimisation model to minimise investment and operation costs of a microbrewery meeting the dynamic energy demands, via an integrated photovoltaic (PV) system with energy storage and different boiler choices to lower carbon emissions. A microbrewery in UK has been used for the case study to demonstrate the approach on real data, with challenges in implementation and real-world constraints and considerations discussed. A set of rigorous multi-objective optimisation and sensitivity analyses are performed to analyse the resulting system. For the particular brewery, a modern electric boiler combined with photovoltaic system is an economic and sustainable choice, due to the cooling and other electric requirements in the brewery, leading to a 33 percent reduction in operational costs with a payback time of 2.6 years.