Solar Champion Stories

In January of 2025, Trillium Brewing Company installed a 150 kW rooftop solar array on their Canton, MA brewery. Expected to produce 172,000 kWh annually, the 310-panel array will offset 168,750 pounds of carbon while reducing the brewery's electric bills. Below, read a Q+A with Trillium co-founder JC Tetreault about their decision to go solar. 

Interview edited for clarity.

Q: What first made you start to think about solar?

JC: Trillium has always wanted to include solar in our production operations, but Royall Street is our first owned property to be able to do so. Energy resiliency, reducing fossil fuel dependency, and rising energy costs all drive photovoltaics to the top of our priorities.

Q: Why did you choose ReVision?

JC: ReVision is a local, small company that is a Certified B Corp. Dealing with folks who understand and appreciate other small businesses, who communicate very well, and who live and work in our same area felt like a perfect fit.

Q: How have you liked your solar so far?

JC: Our array was energized in the dead of winter, but it is very cool to see the impact of energy generation on those sunny winter days. It makes us very excited to watch the system's performance meet, if not exceed, its design parameters. We designed it to be ready for the expansion for "phase 2" when we replace and insulate more roof. We will then have a system that offsets ~50% of our total energy use at the facility, which is quite a lot considering brewery, distillery, restaurant, warehouse, and office power demands in our almost 150,000 sq. ft. building.

Q: Are you considering other sustainability measures for the future? 

JC: We have a 20-car electric vehicle charging station in our parking lot that came online last year. It will soon also have a canopy with a solar array that will generate power, shade cars in the summer, and keep snow off of folks in the winter.

We are soon set to commission our carbon recapture device. It will capture a large portion of our fermentation carbon which will allow us to one day become carbon-independent.  We are working with UConn's IAC center and the federal Department of Energy in an upcoming energy audit this spring to assess other energy efficiency opportunities and grants that we can continue to make Trillium greener.

We have a 163-acre farm where we grow our own grain. Local grain means both eliminating a distributor and far fewer trucking miles. We compost spent grain with arborists' wood chips to make compost for use onsite in our gardens, and we send our spent grain to a local dairy farm for feed.

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