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Solar: Christ the Sower Ecumenical Primary School

Christ the Sower Ecumenical Primary School in Milton Keynes is a 430-pupil school catering for 4-11-year-olds. A modern building houses the school, while their values are very much rooted in the Christian ethos.

Background

The team at Christ the Sower Primary School were keen to emulate the success of renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies that had been installed at other schools.

Being geographically close to another school, The Willows, where we had previously implemented multiple energy efficiency measures to reduce electricity usage and carbon footprint, the leadership team at Christ the Sower were able to see for themselves the benefits delivered by such a system.

By ineco | 11th December 2019

See the solar PV system at Christ the Sower:

Maximum system output

Christ the Sower Primary School’s solar photovoltaic (PV) system was designed in the same way as all our systems, bespoke to their building, and the resultant 109-panel array proved to deliver maximum efficiency.

The school management team were concerned with the possibility of birds nesting beneath the solar panels, given their location, so we installed a bird mesh to prevent nesting occurring underneath the panels to safeguard both the birds and the panels.

Non-repayable funding

At the time of project specification, we obtained a grant from the Carbon Trust on behalf of the school for around £5,000, which was non-repayable. Coupled with the interest-free loan from Salix Finance, government-backed funding which is payable via energy bill savings, the school was able to benefit from significantly lower bills from day one, and maintain a positive cash flow throughout.

Long-term savings

In addition to the reduction in their ongoing electricity bills, the school was able to take advantage of the Feed-in Tariff system, which was available until 2018. This delivers ongoing additional savings to the school on a quarterly basis as they return unused energy to the grid.

Now saving the school over £6,000 on its energy bills annually, making the switch to solar has benefitted the school significantly and enabled the school to channel funds into critical areas such as educational materials and teaching staff.

Results

Electricity savings

18%

Carbon tonnes saving

159

Lifetime savings

£121,815