Riverside Foods relies on renewable energy

Five years on, solar energy has proven itself successful for Riverside Foods. 

You can’t see them well from the street, but the 64 solar panels on the roof of the long-time village grocery at 48 E. Burlington St. quietly do their thing all day, every day, collecting the sun’s rays, which eventually powers a portion of everything below.

Success of the system is data-based, according to co-owner Peter Boutsikakis, and the numbers don’t lie.

The 27.7-kilowatt Generac system produced about 40,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity in 2024, or about 7 percent of the building’s overall power consumption.

Now, walk through Riverside Foods, with its cases of refrigerated and frozen foods, along with copious lighting, and only then will you get a sense that clean energy is top of mind for Boutsikakis and co-owner Anthony Garbis, as it has been since the solar system was installed in 2020.

“We had an influx of business at that time, and we were looking for ways to put money back in the store and try to help our longevity here,” said Boutsikakis, who once worked as a city planner in Aurora and produced a sustainability report there. 

In other words, the idea was to reduce overhead and also create better security from power outages.

The solar array doesn’t only consist of the panels. Two inverters convert the direct current (DC) electricity from the panels into alternating current (AC) electricity commonly used by homes and businesses. There is also a battery that stores converted electricity and is connected to the front-end registers, so if there is a power outage, the transition from grid to solar power is seamless.

How often is that necessary?

“Power outages are common in Riverside, although this past year was not bad for us,” Boutsikakis said, adding everything from bad weather to a fallen utility pole can lead to loss of power.

“There will be a little hiccup and then you’ll notice our front registers coming back on quickly, and that’s all solar. That powers our front end for about a day.”

A natural gas-powered backup generator ensures the coolers in the back won’t go down, thus avoiding food spoilage.

While clean energy has been great for Riverside Foods, there have been a few issues. For example, Boutsikakis said there is a fair amount of troubleshooting for the system, particularly related to its connectors.

Another issue is receiving rebates from producing all that solar electricity, the bottom line when it comes to reducing overhead. Riverside Foods is part of the SREC program, or Solar Renewable Energy Credits, where the business earns one SREC credit per each megawatt hour (MWh) of solar electricity generated.

“I’m producing X-amount of renewable energy, and (I can) sell these credits to another business, entity or organization” that, for whatever reason, can’t use clean energy, Boutsikakis said, adding Riverside Foods has a broker that sells its credits. But the issue is that the solar system hasn’t been running 100 percent operational, so the business hasn’t received its maximum amount of rebates.

Plus, ComEd rates have gone up significantly over the years, which hasn’t helped.

“We haven’t realized the savings in the way we hoped, but without the system we’d clearly be paying more,” Boutsikakis said. “If the rates were the same as in 2020, we’d be saving quite a bit of money.”

But the flip side is the environmental benefits of not only the solar energy, but the electric vehicle charging station in Riverside Foods’ parking lot. Boutsikakis has data for that as well – the station, which is used four to five times per day, saves 780 gallons of gas annually and eliminates about 4,000 pounds of carbon dioxide.

The charger was installed for about $31,000 using a combination of grants from the village and the state.

Also on the docket is a plan to use a state grant to pay for part of a $130,000 overhaul of refrigeration in its last aisle. That means the current open cases would go away in favor of cases with doors on them to conserve energy. At the same time, compressors, condensers and coils that operate the refrigeration would be upgraded to more energy-efficient options.

Seventy-five percent of the cost would come from that state grant.

But when it comes to solar, other Riverside businesses should consider it for a couple of reasons, according to Tom Odena, supervising electrician for Project Green in Chicago, which completed the Riverside Foods project with Hummingbird Electric out of Palatine.

“I think it’s good PR, first of all, and you make money off of it,” Odena said. “It’s also to be a good environmental steward by reducing greenhouse gas.”