Bush Brothers & Company

Bush Brothers & Company is one of the largest producers of baked beans in the United States. The company’s Augusta, Wisconsin facility is the birth place of Bush’s Best Baked Beans, which are made from a ‘secret’ family recipe.

Bush Brothers has a long history of working with Focus on Energy to assist them with implementing energy savings projects.  More recently, in 2013, when the company was starting construction of their most recent expansion they contacted Focus on Energy.  When the company finished that expansion in 2014, Bush Brothers had implemented over 700,000 kWh and 204,000 therms of annual energy saving measures and received over $154,000 in incentives from Focus on Energy.

Bush Brothers included many energy saving measures on new equipment installed during the expansion.  One large energy savings project was the system that recovers rejected heat from the large cooker that is central to the expansion.  Typically the waste heat that is removed from the product after the cooking process would be sent to a cooling tower.  Bush Brothers incorporated a heat exchanger prior to the cooling tower that transfers heat to a water loop that provides heating for the new warehouse in winter months.  The recovered heat offsets the entire heating load of this warehouse when cooking is taking place.  The pumps that circulates the heating water are connected to Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) that control the heating in the warehouse while saving energy on the pumping.  Annually, the heat recovery off the cooker saves Bush Brothers 112,000 therms and $48,000 in heating expenses.  Focus on Energy provided a custom incentive of $82,206 to help make the heat recovery project a reality.

Another significant energy saver was the addition of stack economizers, advanced controls, oxygen trim, and high turn down burners on two new 700 hp boilers.  These upgrades to the boilers save 92,000 therms of natural gas and 65,000 kWh, with an annual savings of $46,000.  Focus on Energy was able to provide a $40,815 custom incentive for the upgrades to the boilers.

In addition to these large energy saving projects, Bush Brothers also included energy saving options on the other equipment installed, including many VFDs on fans and pumps, high efficiency lighting, VSD air compressors, and cycling thermal mass compressed air dryers.  This energy efficient equipment is helping them save an additional 681,700 kWh annually.

For more information, check out Focus on Energy’s website for more details on business programs and incentives or call 1-800-762-7077.