Snack food maker Wholesale Unlimited Inc. has installed a 113-kilowatt solar power generating system on the room of its Waipahu facility that will save the company an estimated $40,000 a year in electricity costs.

Over the next 30 years the photovoltaic system will replace more than 9,600 barrels of oil and otherwise would have been burned for energy, and prevent about 4,543 tons of carbon dioxide emissions from entering Hawaii’s air, said Marc Honma, vice president of Wholesale Unlimited.

The system’s 495 PV panels will generate an average of 521 kilowatt hours of electricity per day, said Marc Unowitz, an energy consultant with Sunetric, which designed and installed the system. Including tax incentives the system should pay for itself sometime in the fourth year of operation, Unowitz said.