Cafecita Coffee Trailer Microgrid

Cafecita is a women-owned specialty coffee roaster, founded in 2020 by Natalie Webb, that sources its green coffee exclusively from women-owned farms and co-ops. In August 2024 its coffee trailer found a permanent home in the courtyard of the plant shop Tansy in Burbank, and Cafecita wanted the bar to run on sunshine.

Modeselekt engineered the integration between three 400W Q.Cells bifacial panels on Tansy’s roof and the trailer’s MPP Solar inverter and Joule lithium batteries. We surveyed the site, mapped a roughly 70-foot cable run from the rooftop array down a utility pole and into the cart in weatherproof conduit, added DC disconnects at both the array and the cart so the system can be safely isolated from either end, and bonded the array, trailer and batteries to the building’s ground.

The system runs in two simple modes, so the baristas never have to think about power. In Battery mode during service, the espresso bar, fridge, freezer, AC and lighting run on solar first and draw on the batteries whenever demand outpaces the panels. In Shore mode overnight, building power tops the batteries back up for the next day.

We load-tested every circuit off-grid, verified both disconnects, and handed Cafecita written procedures for daily operation and for safely unhooking the trailer when it needs to move.

“When there’s extra solar power, it gets stored in the batteries, and when our power needs are greater than what the panels can handle, it draws from the batteries.”

— Natalie Webb, founder of Cafecita