Honduras: PepsiCo goes solar

The PepsiCo bottling plant in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, last week inaugurated the biggest rooftop solar power plant in Central America, with a capacity of 3 megawatts.

The project involves local company Smartsolar (Spanish only), which installs photovoltaic panels, and German-based SMA Solar Technology, which provides inverters.

An inverter transforms the direct current of a photovoltaic solar panel into alternating current, which can be sold to another user when the plant has more energy than it needs.

The system uses 98 SMA Tripower inverters, enough to reduce the energy cost for local bottler Embotelladora de Sula by an estimated 15%.

Smartsolar develops photovoltaic projects for commercial and industrial users in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean.

SMA, whose shares trade on the Frankfurt Exchange, and which has operations in 20 countries, in 2014 had sales of just over E800 million, according to the company’s annual report.