Winding south from the Canadian Rockies, the Columbia River carries the lifeblood of Eastern Washington’s vineyards. But the waters give light as well as life, with 14 dams transforming Columbia’s current into electricity for homes and businesses. As the official folksong of Washington state (penned by folksinger Woody Guthrie) puts it: “Your power is turning our darkness to dawn / So roll on, Columbia, roll on.” The dams have kept power cheap, prompting Google and other companies to move north from California and establish server farms that take advantage of the cut-rate electricity.

But changes in precipitation patterns and demand for water at residences and businesses have lowered stream flows, reducing the capacity for power generation at the dams. The circumstance has prompted power authorities in Washington state and Oregon to encourage conservation—and ironically, it’s just as hydro electricity is coming back into favor as a renewable power source.

Governments, responding to concerns regarding how emissions from fossil fuel use may be contributing to climate change, are seeking alternatives to coal- and diesel-powered generating stations. The earthquake-related meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in March 2011 also dampened enthusiasm for nuclear options on the seismically active West Coast. Hydro, by contrast, is considered clean and green—the massive cost of developing dam infrastructure and the impact on aquatic life notwithstanding.

“As controversial as they are for salmon reasons, (the dams) are also a renewable resource,” observes Don Crank III, winemaker at Willamette Valley Vineyards Inc. in Turner, Ore., and winery technical committee chair of Oregon’s Low Input Viticulture and Enology program.

Crank says WVV depends on hydro for 60% of its power needs, with the remainder coming from coal-powered generation stations and nuclear plants in Washington state. Reducing its power use could not only cut costs and make better use of the resource, it could also reduce the winery’s carbon footprint. When the winery took up former Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s challenge in 2007 to become carbon neutral (an initiative supported by the Oregon Wine Board), Ecos Consulting of Portland, Ore., conducted an audit of WVV’s energy use that pointed a way forward. (An audit typically costs $5,000 to $15,000, but it was sponsored by the Energy Trust of Oregon, a not-for-profit organization funded by ratepayers of local power utility Portland General Electric Co.)

One of the most significant areas where WVV could reduce power use was in cooling its tanks.

“We went about a process of three years of carbon footprinting our operation and then putting measures into place that we thought would help us out with that, and one of those was insulation of our tanks,” Crank says.

Keeping tanks cool during white wine production was the biggest challenge for the winery in terms of managing its power use. While its red wines are laid down in a cellar that effectively uses the thermal mass and insulative properties of the earth to stabilize temperatures, its white wines—especially those with a bit of residual sugar—need cooling to prevent spoiling and ensure proper development.

“The different types of wine that you make also affect the energy cost. Sweet white wine tends to be more expensive from an energy standpoint, because we have to run chilling on it a bit longer to keep it from spoiling, whereas red wine is kept at cellar temperatures underground,” Crank explains.

WVV typically produces between 80,000 and 120,000 cases annually, split 60%-40% between red and white wines.

“The wine is generally kept in big stainless steel tanks, so it can be chilled, and those stainless steel tanks conduct heat and are a little bit harder to keep at a proper temperature, and we don’t get all that free energy from the ground being so cool, either, in our white cellar.”

WVV opted for Astro-Foil, a plastic and metal wrap developed by Innovative Energy Inc. in the mid-1980s and now available for a variety of applications. Designed to reflect 94% of energy back into the system, Astro-Foil is a durable material with air pockets that are ideal for covering the broad surface of the tank. WVV wrapped the glycol jackets on its tanks with Astro-Foil last year and was impressed enough to wrap the rest of the surface with the foil this year. It plans to tackle its glycol refrigeration lines next.

Crank estimates that the sheets of Astro-Foil cost a total of $3,000, which amounts to a month’s worth of power use during peak periods. While a full year’s worth of data isn’t yet available, a savings of 5% on power costs isn’t unlikely, meaning the payback period is less than two years.

“Even though we’ve spent thousands of dollars putting in insulation, I really believe we’ll be paid off in the long run by the savings we get just by running our compressors less,” Crank says.

There’s also the safety factor. The top of some tanks are 30 feet above the production floor, and when only part of the tank was insulated, a layer of ice would form around the top of the tank.

“That ice, when you turn off the tank or the wine warms up when you put warm wine in there, will come hurtling down at you. Luckily, no one’s been hit or hurt by that stuff, but we’ve certainly broken coolant piping before,” Crank says.

Of all the ideas for saving energy, Crank believes tank insulation is “definitely one of them that’s got the best outcome to it.”

WVV’s decision to boost its use of insulation has reduced the load on its compressor, which was one of the critical components that Carlton, Ore.-based Soter Vineyards looked at when assessing its energy use.

Ecos also conducted an energy audit of Soter’s operations. Its cellars are built into the hillside to reduce its energy demands. Cellarmaster Chris Fladwood doesn’t see the same differential in energy use between white and red wine production as WVV reports. He notes that one of the innovative changes that Soter Vineyards made in the wake of its audit was modifying a variable-frequency drive on its pump to help it reduce power consumption by other equipment.

A variable-frequency drive on its Ingersoll Rand air compressor senses how much pressure the pump need s to do its work, reducing energy use. A modification of a Yaskawa Varispeed P7 drive on the pump itself achieves similar results when hooked up to Soter’s destemmer and other equipment.

“We’ve made it so we can use that (variable) frequency drive on other machines,” Fladwood says. Since the destemmer rarely runs at full capacity, the adjustment makes sense practically and financially. The purchase of the drive was helped by Oregon’s Business Energy Tax Credit program and cash incentives from the Energy Trust of Oregon.

“Whatever current we tell it to draw, it draws,” Fladwood says. “This was a small retrofit that has turned out to be very effective.…The amount of power they save is just phenomenal.”

Soter Vineyards also has addressed lighting, reducing the number of lights and replacing its former bulbs with high-efficiency compact fluorescent and LED (light-emitting diode) lighting. Sensors in select areas illuminate lights on an as-needed basis, further reducing costs.

Ste. Michelle Wine Estates in Paterson, Wash., undertook a similar program in 2009, replacing 40 400-watt high-bay fixtures with 200-watt T-12 bulbs. The move cut power use in half and contributed to lower operating temperatures within the winery, which in turn reduced the need to cool the facility. Both were expected to repay the initial investment in less than three years.

The program was touted by the Bonneville Power Administration as an example of what wineries can do to save energy, in addition to reviewing the efficiency of their HVAC, crushing, de-stemming, pumping, cooling and fermenting systems. BPA points to the University of California’s Benchmarking and Energy & Water Savings Tool for the Wine Industry among the tools available to growers and wineries.