Sweet Life Pastisserie

Project Description

“Sweet Life Pâtisserie is a pastry shop located at 755 Monroe St. in Eugene, Oregon.  We specialize in all that is sweet including morning pastries, cakes and cheesecakes, pies, wedding cakes, brownies, tartlets, éclairs, cream puffs, petits fours, cookies, chocolates, gelato and sorbettos.  We also have a full organic espresso and tea bar with over 30 tea varieties.  We try to tread as lightly as possible on the earth by using as many organic ingredients as possible, recycling and composting, and more recently installing our lovely new solar panels.”
Catherine and Cheryl Reinhart, owners of Sweet Life Pâtisserie

In November 2006 Sweet Life installed 2 Solar Electric and 2 Solar Water Heating systems. Together, the systems comprise of 20 KW of PV and 4 KW of Thermal for a grand total of 24 KW of solar generation. The retail store is located at 755 Monroe St. The Bakery is located at 861 W. 8th Avenue.

The Retail Store system features the first installation in the Pacific Northwest of roof-integrated Solarsave modules! This 10.8 KW System has (24) SP-450 Watt modules. There are three strings of 8 modules each supplying power to three SMA SP-3300 positive ground inverters. The solar water heating system is comprised of 2 Sun Earth EC-32 collectors and a Ruud 80 gallon heat exchanger solar tank. The Solar Water Heater is a closed loop anti-freeze system.

The Bakery system features 9 KW of Sharp 180 watt modules. These modules are installed on Uni-Rac tilt racks @20º facing south. The roof penetrations for the tilt racks were sealed with foam and booted with single ply membrane material. There are three sub-arrays of PV modules supplying power to three Xantrex GT3.0 inverters. The three inverters are combined in a inverter sub-panel before connecting to EWEB’s grid. The solar water heating system is comprised of 2 Sun Earth EC-32 collectors and a Ruud 80 gallon heat exchanger solar tank. The Solar Water Heater is a closed loop anti-freeze system.

Both solar electric systems include green tag meters that record the combined amount of power generated. These green tags have been purchased by a Green Tag aggregator.

Project Partners:
Eugene Water and Electric Board 
Three Phases Energy
Dell’s Electric