Our Business with Justin Jarrett: See Saw Wines works smarter to save thousands of dollars on each bill.

Justin Jarrett runs See Saw Wines with wife Pip at Cargo and invested in a solar system eight years ago and has seen his power bills drop from $32,000 per year to about $6000 or less.

He said the drop in prince resulted from changes that he's made to the business, in particular by reducing night-time operating hours so he can maximise the use of power generated from the solar system.

"That was before the price rises but it's not going to go back to what it was," Mr Jarrett said of the $26,000 reduction in price.

"It's the timing of the electricity.

"We are still using the same amount of power in total."

Mr Jarrett said the solar was part of a move by the winery to reduce its environmental impact and carbon footprint and it's also let to reduced costs, with an estimated $160,000 saved so far.

See Saw Wines has three 10kW solar systems, with one on each farm, and it is the winery itself that's the largest consumer.

He said offset meters in particular made a huge difference in addition to change when various tasks take place.

"During the day we were once being paid 9 cents a kW and paying for kWs," Mr Jarrett said.

However, now the winery is using those daytime kWs he said they are not paying for the grid power at night.

"What we've done is made lots of changes in the winery so we are operating lots of things in the day rather than had night," he said.

"The solar cells create the energy in the day."

"If you put that in the grid they give you 9 cents a kW but they charge you 32 cents a kW [you use from the grid."

However, he said with offset meters that load should be costing less.

"All manufacturing [on a small scale] should be looking at offset solar," he said.

"It's a significant saving ... the big saving come from the offset meter."

See Saw Wines is not the only winery in the Orange wine region that's got solar, some other large producers include Ross Hill, Philip Shaw, Printhie, and Tamburlaine, which Mr Jarrett said is the largest with a 100 kW system, "10 times the size of ours".

Mr Jarrett sad he got the offset meter about 12 months ago and it cost the business about $20,000 at the same time as $100,000 was invested into the winery, such as changes to the pressing of grapes so they were done during the day.

He said they now also run the refrigerators colder in the day at 4 degrees than at night at 10 degrees. However, there are also periods in winter when the temperature is cold enough not to run power to the refrigerator at all.

He said the same power usage could also benefit other people who have solar power whether it be for a business or home, suggesting people could save money by running a dishwasher, washing machine or dryer during the day.

"If you have to go to work every day it's more difficult," Mr Jarrett said.

"If you have a solar system on your roof it doesn't take much to change your lifestyle, heat the house while the sun it out, don't walk in at 6pm and turn it on."

In addition to using solar more efficiently, Mr Jarrett said See Saw has also bought a new tractor that is more effiecient with it's diesel consumption which saves money amid high fuel prices.

However, he said when the technology catches up he wants to have solar-powered farm utes.

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