In the Commercial climate, there are many businesses that stand to save thousands by utilizing solar power for some or all of their energy usage needs. For established businesses solar power is an easier decision than for homeowners due to the advantages of system scale size its cheaper per kilowatt installed. Also businesses tend to reside in a single location for a long period of time and don’t have to worry about longer payoff periods. Here are 5 business types, and examples, that stand to benefit most from the switch to solar power.

Laundromats

Tom Benson of Berwyn, IL lays claim to having the largest public-accessible laundromat in the world. It has over 150 washers, about as many dryers, 15 flat-panel TVs — and three dozen 10-by-4-foot solar panels, too.

The solar panels are dedicated to heating water, one of the major costs of any laundry facility. Benson says he put $225,000 into setting up the hot water system, and part of his motivation besides saving money was to act as an example to other businesses, laundromats and beyond.

In addition to reducing energy bills, maintenance costs and various other direct expenses, the interest generated by his solar-powered laundromat has been very good for business. It’s planet-friendly to be sustainable, but good for the economy, too.

Breweries

Breweries are round-the-clock operations, and the combination of systems that heat, cool, pump and process the ingredients of beer add up to big energy expenditures. The Anheuser-Bush (A-B) facility in Fairfield, CA installed an astonishing six acres of ground-mounted solar panels as a way of reducing those costs.

The company made a long-term agreement with local utility SunEdison, which financed and installed the solar power system at the A-B plant. The system’s capacity is nearly 1.2 MW, generating some three percent of the facility’s electricity needs. And the company is not the only “solar supporter” in the brewing industry, either.

To give scape and scope to the project generates nearly 3% of the plants electricity needs, removes 8,000 metric tons of CO2/year, the equivalent to 3,500 cars.

Data storage facilities

Leading the way once again for the high-tech industries, Intel installed solar panels at its New Mexico facility to assess the potential of photovoltaic solar for powering data centers. The amount of power required to run “server farms” of hundreds, even thousands, of computers with constantly-spinning hard drives is huge. Solar was thought to have costs that were too high and capacities that were too low, but advances in solar technology have convinced data storage firms to take another look.

Intel is testing a 10KW solar array at the data center, using it for supplemental power to handle “capacity challenges” during the summer. The project is merely a first step toward fully-solar-powered data centers, and is being conducted at the same site that Intel does research into what are called “air side economizers,” a passive approach to data center cooling.

Restaurants

In Kingston, MA, the urge to combine more environmental awareness with a reduction in energy costs motivated Average restaurants’ owners to install solar panels. Restaurants have massive energy costs, from air conditioning and lighting for patrons to cooking and refrigeration.

In June 2008 a typical installation could cost a business approximately $200,000, a sum that was produced after the offset with both state grants and a federal tax credit. The panels will likely pay for themselves in a mere 8 years, with a projected $2,150, monthly savings in energy costs. Another positive impact of solar power is the replacement of power systems that cause pollution. In the case of a typical restaurant, the panels will keep over 511,000 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere during the system’s lifetime.

Manufacturing facilities

GreenWaste Recovery’s Material Recovery Facility in San Jose, CA installed a 1,502-panel, dual-array solar power system to reduce its immense energy bill. Its 1.8-acre system is among the largest commercial solar power installations in San Jose, the state’s third-largest city.

Manufacturing and materials-processing facilities use huge amounts of power for their mammoth machines, large HVAC systems and lighting. The GreenWaste facility, for example, sorts, recovers and recycles household waste on a 24/7 schedule, and sought a single solution to reduce its energy costs, reliance on fossil fuels, production of pollutants and overall “carbon footprint.”

The company’s management settled on 300 KW solar arrays that are predicted to produce over 400,000kWh of zero-emission electricity every year, enough to power 40-50 area homes for 12 months. The solar installation firm financed the GreenWaste system through a Solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), giving GreenWaste a system that benefits the environment and lowers its electricity bills with no money down. Obviously, going solar can be a good economic move for big businesses in various industries.