In this session expert guest speakers explore the topic of renewable energy options for SMEs
Watch this session to discover more about:
☀Key considerations before opting for solar photovoltaic (PV) installation.
☀Associated costs involved in setting up renewable energy systems.
☀The amount of energy generated by solar PV systems.
☀Maintenance requirements associated with renewable energy installations.
☀The lifespan of renewable energy systems.
Speakers
Richard Fuell – Business Development Manager Aniron Renewables
Richard Fuell has been in the solar industry for over a decade and has a wealth of experience. He is a well-recognised figure in the sector and has been involved in many aspects of Solar Energy. Designing and installing solar systems for both residential and industrial, Educating thousands of installation companies and businesses. Richard explains things very well and has a real passion for solar, renewable energy and the transition away from fossil fuels.
Chris Barrett – Managing Director, Managing Director Wickman Group
Wickman is a global supplier and manufacturer of multispindle lathes, designed to produce medium and large volumes of extremely precise, high quality components.
In 2022 the Green Business Programme offered Wickman a grant towards installing a solar PV system to help them reduce the cost of energy and their carbon footprint. Chris will share with us their experience, including the challenges and learnings.
So so thanks for you all for joining. And could I ask just quickly if you could perhaps all turn your mic’s on mute for me just so we can we can all hear clearly if that’s possible before we start. Lovely. Thank you.
So just to introduce our first of all, for those that don’t know me, I’m Jonathan Howl. I’m an energy advisor, a commonly City Council, and I’ll be chairing today’s session now a bit of context. First of all, for those of you don’t know about the decarbonization net zero program, it’s designed to help
Businesses in the West Midlands and Warwickshire areas basically reduce that energy rules and access grant funding for measures to improve that. So things like lighting, heating so on and so forth. So we also like to provide alongside that we feel it’s our duty to be honest with you, to provide information and
Discussions in areas that are sustainability related, energy efficiency related. So today’s session will focus on something that we’re all very much in favor of and those of you that have met me know that I talk about this a lot. So we’re focusing today on on solar PV.
So today’s session will cover how solar PV array works, what the benefits are. We also have a really, really, really good case study from a Yeah. local Coventry business who’s part way through his very positive net Zero journey. And then finally, I’ll give a little overview of the grant
Funding available moving forward for you. So before we start, though, we can just do a bit of housekeeping as you’d expect if you could, it wouldn’t. If you wouldn’t mind, turn your videos off if that’s possible, and most importantly, if you could all mute yourselves to avoid any of that background noise.
With sometimes here now in terms of the Q&A, we’re going to do a quick question and answer session. After each speaker, use the chat function for that as you would expect, and I’ll pick it up when we come to it, or if you like.
If you’re feeling brave, put your hand up and I’ll open the floor up to yourselves. The webinar will be recorded just to confirm it’s recorded and we will also send you out a recording of the session and as you would expect, all the slides to be sent out to you as well
After the session and also a feedback form to let us know how we can improve where we went wrong, what was good, what was bad. Please fill that out if you can. It helps improve for future sessions, so just quickly, just go through the agenda because time is time.
Is is keen today have the next slide please, Maria. OK, so as you can see, just starting now. First, first speaker starting very, very shortly followed by a Q&A session. Then our specialist case study from our Coventry Business, Whitman Group, following that again some Q&A S then I’ll
Give that quick grant overview that I mentioned earlier on about how the grants work and so on. And our aim is to get finished by it by 4:30. If you’re OK with this, if we’re having a really good time and we’ve got lots of engagement, we’ll crack on.
Richard already mentioned that he’s happy to talk till till tea time. So we’ll see how we go. We’ll see how it how the engagement goes and how and how good you you feel today speakers are. So we’ll we’ll, we’ll watch this space basically. So.
So without further ado, I would like to introduce our first speaker, industry expert Richard Fuell, to the session. Now we know Richard well in our program, he’s spoken a fair few times before, so over to you, Richard. The floor is yours. Thanks very much. Thank you.
Umm, so I just like to say first of all well done to everything that you guys are doing because I believe that every Council, with every, every area of the British Empire, should be doing exactly what you’re doing. So you’re doing fantastic results for everything you’re doing so well. Done.
Just a very brief example here on this first slide, just showing who? Anna Ron are so aniron. Renewables are in installation company founded back in 2012 and still with the founding members and and they they they installed solar PV systems for both commercial and utility scale solar.
Installations experts in design, and that’s one of the main things about the the company itself, because we’re experts in high level design and we we have a consultative approach. So this this for you as business owners is really something which which you’ll hopefully gonna see in the next 20 minutes to
Actually show which aspects of soda that we are installing. So about me myself. My name is Richard Fuell. I’ve been in the solar industry for 13 years and I actually started out in the whole industry as an installer. Will that time ago, that’s when I used to have hair and I didn’t
Have wrinkles back then either. So it’s a long time ago and it was great. It was brilliant. I was built. I was buff. It was wonderful. Had muscles, and then since then I started working for a solar panel manufacturer. I’ve worked for a solar inverter manufacturer for the last eight
Years and like I mentioned, I’ve joined Anna Ron just a few months ago now in the commercial industry installation company. OK, so there’s there’s my contact details just on there if you would like to see next slide. Thanks. Just a few examples of what what Anderon has been up to over the
The last year. So there’s there’s some large installations in the in the Midlands area, so we are based in Northamptonshire, but you can see there that there’s a project there. Number one listed is Commins, which make diesel engines, and they’re based just outside Daventry, and this is 2.2 MW system.
You can see some examples of rooftops and ground arrays and it’s quite nice to actually see the ground arrays that are actually feeding the properties. There’s a difference when you see if. If you’re down in Devon or Cornwall or along the South
Coast, you see fields and fields of solar panels and what they’re doing is they’re directly feeding power into the grid, just like a gas station. Just like a coal fired power station, they’re feeding energy into the grid. And these examples, what these are doing is actually feeding
The properties so the roof space available isn’t actually large enough to encompass how much energy that they’re using. But then if they own land adjacent to that area, then we can then deploy solar panels on that area as well. The feeds directly into the property.
It’s the most efficient way of using energy and generating energy because you haven’t got any transmission charges, you’re not sending energy from all the way over 300 miles across the country. You’re using it directly on site, so there’s also been some projects as well, Mulberry handbags.
So the people that are into Mulberry Wimbledon is the tennis center and also Twickenham Stadium as well, so some nice nice projects that we’ve been involved with. Next slide, please. So what I’m gonna do today is answer a lot of your questions.
I’m gonna go over a a live design which I’ve already put together in just to show you all of the different things that happen with solar. This is gonna show the different months of the year of when you’re generating power. For those of you that are have been noticing the weather
Recently, it’s been very cloudy. Solar isn’t actually that good. However, 50% of the energy in the UK has come from wind in the whole month of January, so the renewables are increasing all of the time. So it’s a really, really nice thing to actually see.
It’s a deployment of renewable energy, and solar is one of those things which is obviously becoming mainstream now. So I’m gonna show also how PV system actually performs by showing a monitoring system of a live site and then answer all of these different questions, IE what’s the costs associated with
Installing a solar panel system? How much does it actually cost on that day? One. And then what is the revenue that you’re going to be receiving over that amount of time? So this is what’s known as the payback period. So if you invest a £40,000 and you’ll receiving £10,000 back
Every year, you’ll pay back. Period is 4 years. How much energy can one expect from a generating system? Again, it depends on the time of year, the day or the week the weather, how much carbon can we save? A lot of people now are installing solar just to reduce
Their carbon, so I’ll be showing you that as well. Next slide please. A few more questions as well. How will a solar PV system impact energy bills? So obviously you’re generating power. You’re not using power from the grid, so how much is that going to affect your energy bills?
What warranties guarantees of the solar PV system? What’s the lifetime of the system? If you install it today, is it still going to be working in 10 years time? Yes. Is it still gonna be working 20 years? Yes, but what’s the warranties that are still associated with those systems as well?
And then how does the solar PV system integrate with the existing energy infrastructure? What do you need to do? Planning permission all of these different things. I’ll answer all these anyway. Next slide please. So very, very briefly, how does the solar system actually work in the 1st place?
So solar photovoltaic, known as PV, it generates electricity. It doesn’t do hot water, it’s electricity. It’s generating electricity and what’s known as a solar panel in our world is what’s known as a solar module. So we use the word module PV modules and what they’re doing
Is they’re basically turning DC power into AC power via something called an inverter. So all of the solar panels on the roof, they come down to an inverter that then changes it into AC. That’s what we’re using in our properties in our buildings, in our, in our homes. And then what happens then?
Is it then directly goes into the building, so the power that you’re generating from the sun, the priority goes into the building. So now you’re using the power of the sun in your building. If you’re generating too much, it’s simply goes out to the grid.
If you’re not generating enough, or if it’s night time, it comes from the grid. So everything’s all automatic. There’s nothing you need to turn on. Nothing. You need to switch off or anything like that. It’s all their working all of the time automatically. Next slide please.
So number one question, how much does the solar panel produce? So these two graphs are don’t know how well you can see them, but on the left hand side this is a sunny day. This is a beautiful day. A really nice clear sky blue sky sunshine the whole way.
Cloudless day and we can see this thing called a bell curve. This is where it’s actually a nice generation throughout the day as we move around, we face the sun. You can see there at 12:00 o’clock. That’s when we generating the most and then as the sun then
Peters off in the afternoon and then into the evening. And that’s that’s just peeking above 300 watts. That’s what a solar panel can produce. OK, it depends on the solar panel, but in this particular one, it’s actually producing just over 300 now, the exact
Same solar panel on the exact same system facing the exact same way the following day when it’s a cloudy day, you can see the difference in generation now and it gets up to 80. So if solar panels work very well in direct sunlight, they do
Work well in what they do work in daylight. But like for example, a day in January compared to a day in June, there’s a much, much different pattern in there. So the daily generation versus the monthly generation, what’s the annual generation? So what we can predict before the systems installed is what
Your annual generation is going to be like, which is built up of monthly. If someone says to you I wanna know what the daily generation’s gonna be, then you need to speak to a weatherman. What’s the weather going to be like on June the 23rd, 2026? No idea.
No one knows, so it’s impossible to go down to a daily. But what we can do is work out the annual generation, which is based on a month and that comes from historic data. It also depends on the location in the country. If you’re further South, if you’re down in Cornwall or
Devon, you’re gonna generate more power than if you’re in Scotland. Not just because we receive more sunny than the Scottish weather, but also down to the app amount of the the the latitude of the Earth as well. So the further up the country you’re actually gonna generate less.
If you’re going further South, it generates more, so it then also comes down to the orientation to the sun. If you’re facing directly S sun rises in the east comes round the South and then sets in the West. So from this we’re then looking at how much generation we’re looking at.
If we are looking at an East West system compared to just the directly S also, then the angle towards the sun. So if you’ve got it on a pitch of about 30 degrees, or if you’ve got it on a pitch of 15 degrees again, it then generates different throughout that year as well.
In the summer, you may be generating more. If you’ve got a lower pitch, but in the winter you’ll be generating less, so there’s lots of different things in and this is where our consultative approach comes across to look at what the system is.
So what I’m gonna do is I’m actually just gonna start by just showing you very, very briefly a solar system in action and just show. So this is actually my house. I know there’s system very well. So which is why I’m showing you this.
It’s not a commercial property and it’s quite nice as well because we’re still generating a bit of solar. So what we’re looking at here is over here on the left hand side, hopefully you can see my mouse is we’re generating at the moment 220 volts.
The property is using 330 watts, so then it’s topping up from the grid of that existing power. Now as we Scroll down we just Scroll down here, but I’m just gonna go back to yesterday to give you a full idea of a full day.
I’m just gonna take off the solar production and the self consumption. This is the power that we’ve used in the House in red and we can see when we’re sleeping overnight coming along here, just following my mouse down the bottom. This is what’s known as a base load.
Now a base load is the power that we using when we’re not really doing anything. We’re asleep, so in properties this can be done to the fridge. The freezer. A Wi-Fi box, BT box, whatever. You’ve got again in businesses, it can be a lot more than this
And you can see a high base load depending on what power that you’re actually using in the property. With a commercial system and also residential as well, but much more in commercial, we use a lot more power during the day because that’s when we’re at work.
So in this example here these peaks, these spikes, what they are is actually a dishwasher turning on. It’s a washing machine. Turning on now, what you’ll find on a commercial sector is it will jump straight up at 8:00 o’clock nine o’clock.
When you get to work, when you turn the lights on, turn the computers on, you’ve got the air conditioning going. Whatever you’ve got, it will generate. Sorry, it will consume a lot more power during the day than it will above your base load outside of that.
So that’s, that’s how it’s working and you can see this every day. So if we go back to the previous day, we can then see how much power we’re using now at the top up here, it shows you in red how
Much power we’ve used from the grid and we can see how much we’ve generated from the solar power. So if I just put the solar over the top, that’s what the solar generated. So in a commercial aspect, we are actually looking at the
Power that the you’re using and your property and the solar actually works through that. Now what I want to do is I just wanna show you now my parents house has a really nice example because my parents house have actually got a much higher load.
They’ve got a heat pump that’s installed and you may hear more about heat pumps as well as you go through even for your businesses or for for your your own personal residential houses now heat pumps use electricity and we can see here that my
Parents have used a lot more electricity than I have because their heat pump is turning on and turning off throughout the day. There’s their tiny little amount. They’re there. Solar energy because we’re in February, it doesn’t generate much power.
If I change this to a week, we can then see all of those spikes over a week and how much energy they’ve actually used this week. Again, up here it shows you 192 kilowatt hours. If we then go to a month, so this is this month so far to its
Drops because that was the previous month. But let’s go to the previous month and show how much of their solar energy they generated. It’s 117 kilowatt hours, so if we go for a year and obviously I just want to show you this from last year cause it’s really nice example. Take your time.
Let’s take the self consumption off and take the consumption off. That’s the generation of the solar throughout the year. So we can see in December where’s the green one there it produced 670. Sorry, 67 kilowatt hours compared to in June, it produced 430.
So at the solar generates very, very well from March through to October, November, December, January, February. It doesn’t generate that much power, so this thing comes into your consumption and how much power you’re actually gonna use. So in this example, what I’m doing here with the a design, so
I’ve put this design together and this is where we can answer those questions about the carbon saving the cost saving, how much does it cost? What’s the payback? The payback depends on how much power you’re using, because if you’re not using that much power during the day, your payback is
Not gonna be very good because the power is going out to the grid. You wanna use that power when the sun shining. So in this example I’ve given you here a flat roof system, so I just show you what it looks like. This is a flat roof system.
We’ve got a couple of trees and bushes around it, and what I’ve done here, I’ve angled the panels perfectly so they’re actually going South. So this is the way that your invitation is OK we’ve also got a little parapet wall around the outside to some flat roofs, have
A parapet wall, and then if I just Scroll down slightly we can then see the effects of the shading that would happen around this parapet wall. OK, so this this is the the shade over the whole year obviously in, in, in, in the winter, it’s actually gonna be a
Higher shadow cost over but in the summer the sun’s much higher in the sky. So this just gives you an indication. So we try and stay away from that as much as possible. When we then come down, let’s come down just here and we can actually. Ohh no, I’ve done it.
I’ve support the surprise. Sorry. So what we’ve got here is this is a southerly facing roof and we’ve actually got up here 114 solar panels on this roof now right next to it. What I’ve actually done is I’ve actually made the array so it’s
Actually facing East West as well, exactly the same roof, same design, same location. But these panels are facing east West rather than actually facing directly S when we’re doing an East West design. If I just show you this bit here, we need to keep a space
Between the southerly facing because of the shadow that they will cast on the panel behind them. So with an East West system, we can actually minimize that space that’s there. So we can get more solar panels on the roof because the the the
Shadow that will be cast because the angle slightly lower, it won’t cause as much of a shadow, which means that we can put more solar panels on the roof so we can see with the southerly facing we’ve got 114 solar panels. But with the east West system, we’ve got 136.
So we’re getting an extra 22 solar panels on the roof. So when we then Scroll down and then we look at the design difference between these, so maybe these numbers won’t mean anything to you, but we’ll see what happens. So right here, this is the total system size. It’s 62 kilowatt peak.
The somebody facing is 52 kilowatt because we’re getting more solar panels on the roof. We’re now gonna be generating more power. Or are we? So this is the southerly. It’s gonna generate 48 MW hours. And their east West because we have got more, we are gonna generate 53.
This is the consumption of the property, so I’ve just I’ve just guessed that 50 MW hours is generally what someone’s using in a commercial property of this size, and on this this works out to being around 137 kilowatt hours per day. So it’s roughly 17 per hour.
OK, so on this here they’re using 50 MW hours and all of this power in red is still going to come from the grid in the winter, when it’s when it’s night time. You know when the power this is again the base load all those
Things, the blue there is the power that’s coming from the sun. So over here we then got the exported power. This is the power that we’re not gonna be using in the property because in June we’re generating so much power we can’t even use it all.
But again, what you need to be thinking of, not again, I haven’t said it yet. You need to think about the future. Are you gonna be adding electric charges to your properties? Are you gonna have a fleet of EV chargers outside where you’ve then got people, guests, customers, staff arriving in
Their electric car in five, 10-15 years? If you’re using all of the power that you’re generating, we’re now you’ve just increased your load again. So you want to kind of have this basis of installing as much as you can now to prepare yourself for the future.
So when we then talk about the payback, as I’ve mentioned about the payback, so as we can see here on the right hand side, we’ve got a payback here of 5.1 years when we compare that to the southerly facing the payback is 4.8 years. So you would then think, right. It’s brilliant.
Let’s go with the southerly facing. I’m gonna get my money back within 4.8 years, so as an example, I’ve put a price on there of around £40,000. It’s just an estimated price of what we believe this for. This system would cost, so it could be more, could be less.
It’s just an indication and this this £40,000 installation is gonna get the money back in 4.8 years. OK, so that’s how much money you’re gonna save in in that time. Now, what’s quite interesting here is the system profit, which is worked out over a 20 year payment for two at a 20 year
Investment. So that’s what I’ve set the model out because the solar panels are gonna work for 20 years. So from this here we’ve got a profit here of 132,000. If I go back to that East West system. Who think? Click it, click, click it. The system profit there is 139,000.
So it’s actually the payback is better on the 4.8 years. It’s worse than the 5.1 years, but over that length of time, it’s actually more cost effective to go for that East West system. So this is when the question comes up. Why are you installing solar panels?
Are you doing it to get your money back as long as possible? Are you as soon as possible, or are you doing it cause it’s an investment for your building? It’s an investment for your business that you want to be as
Risk averse as possible and make as much savings or as much money out of this over that length of time. Now finally, just before I backhand back over, I don’t know how long I’ve got. No, this is all loads of time. This one here.
This is a different system and again this one is really, really nice. This system here this is in Warwick. This is an example of 1 in Warwick and you can see here I’ve got my solar panels all on this roof just here and again
What I’ve done with this one is I’ve actually put the panels on the east and the West facing roof as well. Why? Because my consumptions much higher. So in this example, what I’ve done, I’ll come back to that in a SEC.
What I’ve done here is I’ve said that we’re using 200 MW hours, so we’re using a lot more power, which is around 274 kilowatt hours per day, around 34 per per per hour. OK, so it depends what you’re consumption is. If you’re not using a lot of power, you wanna go for a
Smaller system. If you’re using a lot of power, then you wanna get as much power as you possibly can. So in this system is, well, let’s just go back and let’s just show you what the situation is here. So the colors on this system here actually are showing you
The the effects of the sun. So this this aspect here, this facet of the roof is is a normally facing it doesn’t generate as much as it does on this southerly facing. It doesn’t mean you can’t install solar panels on it. It just means it’s not gonna generate as much power again.
We can model it and see what the system looks and you can have all four groups, but as we can see here, we’ve then got these trees. So I’ve modeled the trees in there as well, and what happens is the trees will cast shadows.
So in a nice color form, if I just zoom in, you can actually see up here. This is a nice bright yellow, but down here it’s actually more of a an orange. And over here it’s it’s a dark orange. So this area down here isn’t going to generate as much power
As the ones up here. OK, so in this example over here we can see it from Birds Eye view and then if we then just split over just to the subtly facing, we can see we’re just on that better generating surface. So once again, let’s come down and let’s see.
So the payback on this system with the pricing that we’ve put in there is four years. And if we flip over to the the East, West, and South, it’s actually 4.9 years. But again, if we are understanding why we’re installing solar panels, what are we installing solar panels for?
Are we just doing it to get our money back as quickly? If we’re doing it to get our money back as quickly. Ohh then we would then be going for that only facing that way because we’re going to make a system profit there of £422,000 over that 20 year period.
If we go for all aspects of the roof, we’ve just increased our profit by £70,000, so it depends what you wanna do. OK, when we then come down to the CO2 emissions again, because we’re installing so many more panels about here, we’ve got 182 kilowatt system over here, it’s 110 kilowatt system.
Here it’s 110 kilowatt system. Kilowatt system we’re looking here that the CO2 savings are 20 ton per year, but over here we’re actually looking at 30 tons. So everyone has their different examples, their horses for courses. You should say of what they want to achieve, but this whole
System or what we do as our consultative approach is provide you the end user, the business owner of what’s right for you, because everyone’s gonna be different with what they’re generating, what they’re using and what their aspirations are to actually and reduce their energy costs.
Finally, this graph just here shows you that if you invest in this example £160,000, that’s your deficit just there and then year by year. The savings that you come to your break even point just there and then for the rest of it is then all pure profit for you and your business, Jonathan.
Lovely. Is that the end of your your presentation? Very good. I think so. OK. Yeah. Good. No good, I think. I think to add to that and obviously this is something we could we could look at when we send you the the details later,
This shows the benefit of engaging with a really good provider, a good solar supplier will give you all of this positive information for your particular users and your particular site. So you can go and get your local electrician to install panels.
Great, but you won’t get that level of that level of sort of involvement that are good supplier will provide. So Richard, thank you for your overview. Hope people have found that found that useful, so let’s just quickly look at we got any we’ve got any questions?
First of all, in the chat, uh, nothing as of yet. So I have prepared myself for Richard for some questions for you myself, if that is OK and firstly. In terms of turns, the technology I mean I I’m I’m quite quite savvy on my technology and how things are
Advancing very quickly with this sort of technology in terms of heat pumps and solar. Yep. What? What point do people wait for the next new shiny thing to come out? Or do they do it now by that? By that I mean is there a new fantastic next generation panel
Round the corner in the next couple of years that is worth waiting for, or is it worth doing now based on the quick payback that you’ve already already gone through? If that question makes sense. OK. So just to give you a bit of history, when I started in the
Solar industry back in 2011, two 1012, there was a feed in tariff, OK. A feed in tariff OK, and people were saying the same thing about then. I’m gonna wait. It’s quite expensive. It’s this is that then the feed in tariff thing got cut and it
Was reduced then the feeding tariff got cut and it was reduced then reduced, then reduced and reduced and then all Yeah, yeah. of a sudden it then got to the stage where there wasn’t a feed in tariff anymore and people are just doing it to save money just
To save their, you know just to save money. And I I I don’t think it’s a question of if you’re gonna get Yeah. solar panels. I think it’s a question of when you’re gonna get solar panels Yeah, yeah, yeah. and if it’s not this year, it’s next year.
If it’s not next year, it’s the year after. Yeah, yeah. Now you can make that decision to start saving straight away, or you can wait a year and actually do it. The efficiency of solar panels is getting better. It has got better year by year, but the efficiency of a solar Yeah.
Panel is just surface area. That’s all it is because if for example on those examples I was doing there on the East, South and West, it was 180 kilowatt peak, that means all the solar panels added up together add up to 180.
If I go back ten years, we were probably looking at about 100 kilowatt peak. That’s it. That’s all it is. It’s the difference in the capacity of the power that’s being provided out of those solar panels. Yeah. OK. So is there something new coming battery technologies coming?
I’ve mentioned it, and when I say coming, it’s already here, but it’s advancing a lot more into free face storage as well. Again, you’re only gonna install solar panels once. Yeah. Do it right the first time, because that’s the investment Yep, Yep, Yep. that you’ve got for 10152025 years.
So yeah, long answer once again. Yeah. No, not not, no good answer. Sorry John. And again it loops back to engaging with somebody that can install it and install it. Well, for you basically, so thank you. I’ve got one. One final question that is I’ve been asked to me.
I’ve been dealing with two companies in the last week or two who were were about to choose who to go with. They’ve got their three quotes, which is fantastic. What advice would you be able to give for things that people should be looking for in order of choosing their preferred
Supplier there any sort of pointers that they should be looking at in terms of perhaps the warranty length or the financials of the business that that kind of thing you can give Sure. us some advice on that that would be great. I see.
So I I would I would that the main thing you’ve mentioned the word warranties, I think the main thing that I see I work for an inverter manufacturer, I dealt with every installation company across the country. And the one thing that I would say more than anything else is
In the last two years since the energy crisis came around, there’s a lot of companies that have jumped onto it and in the next year, there’s gonna be a lot of companies going out of business as well because they can’t sustain that level of enquiries. They’ve all dropped off.
Energy prices went through the roof. Yeah. Everyone jumped on and then from that, they’re all gonna go out, Rachel actively saying this. I’m not there. Brilliant. And you know, it’s that they will be going out of business as well. The main thing about this is you’re investing in this system.
It’s like putting your money in HSBC in that West in Barclays, and you’re putting it in there for the next 20 years. That’s the relationship that you have with your installation company. So what I would be saying is make sure the installation company over their financials are in a good place, but they
Know what they’re talking about. They know and it is great because there are some fantastic companies in the Midlands area, but just how long have they been in business? What products are they actually using in the 1st place? Safety insurance planning permission. All of these different things that you need to be talking
About with them, so I don’t know. Yeah. Thank you. I don’t know if it helps. We’ve we’ve actually had some questions just from the chat, so I’ll, I’ll, I’ll just quickly go to them and then we’ll move on to our to our next speaker. So Nigel Nigel Turner, thanks for your question.
Is four to five years a reasonable estimate on payback based on current tariffs? Well, the examples you’ve shown, Richard, yes. And the ones that I do are so is that about right? Do you think as a general? I in some in some examples it’s left.
I mean, in some examples, I mean we’re we’re we’re deploying the designs where the paybacks are down around three years and Yeah, yeah. that’s because they’re using so much energy. And if you look at the energy costs, the whole thing comes down to the energy pricing. How much you paying for your energy?
If you’re paying five per kWh or you’re paying 20 per kWh, then from that your energy payback is gonna be a lot quicker with the 20 peak kilowatt, you know it’s it’s a map. Yeah. That’s all it is, right? Yeah, yeah. And then from that, if you’re not using the power during the
Day, but it’s going out for the grid, then you payback’s gonna be less. But as I said before, it’s not just about the payback. Yeah, yeah. The quickest payback is the answers, the previous question what should you be looking for? Not the payback? Absolutely not the payback.
What’s the long term investment for this? Yeah. OK. So yeah, so in answer the question 4-5 years, yes, reasonably, sometimes less, sometimes more. It depends. Depends on the angle. OK. Depends where you are. All of those different varieties that are. Yeah. And and again Nigel, like to reiterate again, engage with the
Good supplier who can give you all the information broken down for you to make that decision moving forward for you. A couple more quick questions on on sola, good question here from Gerard Davis actually, which I think one of your diagrams showed earlier on Richard Solar on roofs versus solar on agricultural land.
What’s the argument? I presume you mean which is, which is better. I think you alluded to that the start actually Richard, to be Yeah, it depends. fair, so. I mean, if if there’s The thing is about ground arrays, solar panels in fields, it depends where the power’s going.
If it’s feeding the grid, it’s an energy system. It’s a. It’s an energy provider for the grid. If you’re putting it on your building or land adjacent to your building which is feeding the property, it’s a lot more efficient. Cost wise, it comes down to that as well.
How much maintenance is required on a roof compared to how much maintenance is in a field? Umm, the size of the system, I mean, generally speaking ground rates are slightly cheaper, but it it’s scalability. If you’re doing 100 kilowatt system or 100,000 kilowatt
Systems, it’s obviously gonna be more cost effective to go on on, on a field rather than than on a building. It is a good question. I could go on for 10 minutes just answering that question. And I think actually just following on from that, David
Norris has a good question about listed buildings and conservation areas. Correct. How do we support those? I actually as as a as a I’m gonna segue here, David. I saw on The One Show yesterday there was a really good little case study about a listed building, a stately home who had
Just installed a huge heat pump and a lot of solar panels on their grounds. And it was a really good thing to see if you’ve got that got Pretty, I said. the iPlayer, have a look, have a look at that and. What I was gonna say restrict listed buildings.
Yes, ground arrays can get through. Yeah. Obviously it’s not just the building, it can be the land mass as well. Yeah. I live in a conservation area. I had to put planning permission in two years ago to actually put solar panels on my roof. The local council came back and said no. Uh.
Ah yeah, they anyway, I got it through in the end because I Right. just said, well, you’ve, you’ve declared a climate emergency. OK. Essentially, it comes down to the Council or what you’re doing conservation areas. You shouldn’t have any issue with installing solar, but
Obviously you would need to get the planning permission to do that in the 1st place listed buildings. There are a lot more tricky, but that’s when you can then go into ground arrays. Yeah. OK, good stuff. Final question Richard, I promise and this is something
That I get asked a lot, which is why I thought I’d mention it actually. Thank you anyway for your for your question and good, good to see you on the call. Can solar be installed on asbestos roof? Solar panels could be installed on anything, absolutely
Anything, whether you want to do it, whether we would do it is a different story. So solar panels can work on anything. You can install the solar panel on a car and it would work in the road. It would work. Solar panels just need light.
So can solar panels be installed on this bestows roof? Yes, they can. Would we do it? No, I would probably be. I would be suggesting that you would be changing the roof to. The thing is, again, it comes down to your investing in your room for 20 years.
If you’re putting a, if you put soda on top on asbestos roof and in 10 years time there’s a new regulation, you gotta take all the solar panels off all the roof off and then check to do on Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. day one. That’s what I say, but yes.
The the the ones I’ve seen are and. Who’s you’ve been a case of. We’ve got overclad the roof before we put the solar on. So. So yeah, more, more, more to consider. Correct. And I just wanna jump on this. And you can then you can then factor it into your payback,
Can’t you as well in terms of what you’re looking to achieve? Absolutely. And I just want to answer this last one as well, where it says, why would why would we want to stop switch food production to energy production? It’s quite an interesting topic, this one as well.
There’s more agricultural land to grow food, which isn’t food that goes in to get burnt to produce energy. So whether you driving around, you got all this corn growing Yeah. everywhere, it gets chopped down, it goes into round aerobic and biomass boilers. Yeah, I think we’ve got the topic for our next webinar.
So they’re already doing it anyway. At some point, Richard, if you, if you’re free. So. So look, look. Thank you. I think we’ll we’ll call the the Q&A’s A to to a halt on that. You’ve been really good on your on your questions and answers, Richard. So thank you.
So I’d like to just quickly move on then to our next speaker. I’d like to welcome to the session, Chris Barrett from Whitman, Coventry. There our program for a bit of context and supported Chris over the last few years and personally I think his case
Study the deal go through now is a good example. Of how to do things and do it well. So hope that was a good introduction for you, Chris, and over to you. One yeah. Wonderful. Thank you, Jonathan, and thanks for all the help that you’ve given us in the team. Pleasure.
No problem at all. So I’m Chris Barrett and the company is Wickman Coventry and we’ve been, we’re almost 100 years old. Next year will be celebrating their 100th birthday and which we’re looking forward to. They’d move along. Please, Maria. So founded in 1925, where a machine tool builder and have
Built thousands of machines across across the period across the time, and our business here predominantly now is buying back the old machines or taking back the old machines and rebuilding them and recycling, recycling them up, specking them and we probably get through a couple of 100 tonnes of reuse castings a
Year and which puts us in a in a good mold when sort of recycling and and upcycling things. And on top of that, a huge amount of what comes into us, we reprocess, it goes out and scrap material and comes back in as as new steel, if we could keep moving on.
So it just gives you a quick view of our factory machines that we build. So again, looking at those, they’re castings. They’re made from machines that were made up to 70 years ago, so some of the bases of the machines can be 70 year old, 70
Years old, and they’ll go out and they’ll probably work for another 20 or 30 years before we need to bring them back in for for another rebuild. Hopefully we’ll get another life out of them again. Thanks man. Gives you a quick little bit of the before and after, so you’ll
See a machine that’s been out there forever. How it comes into us, they’ve really done its work and it gets off and gets a a a real nice new life and and goes off and does a great job. And for another another period of time.
So our first steps, I think I think they actually started right in the beginning with with the Council. And Sarah may have been involved in in the early in the early days we started looking at what we were doing here. Umm went through how to look at everything was happening in the
Factory, highlighted a few projects and that the first thing we really got into was just turning off lights, turning off appliances that weren’t be used and started driving down our our usage, particularly with electricity. And we also got in a survey again early doors and had a look
At the heating in the factory of hot water and of the and the offices and got a new boiler and the the Council stepped up and helped us with a grant which was which was brilliant and get also gave us a cycle to work facility and that people we could start Me.
Encouraging people to do a bit of exercise before or after work The Neville they were going to, you know. and they’ll be a there’ll be a shower here and that came from You were going to leave the party. some Council, you know, Council helping the beginning. That, yeah, but I’m 4.
So our benchmark back in 2014, we’d used almost 166,000 kilowatts of power electrical. You’ve gone on mute, Chris, I think can’t hear you. I don’t know how it happened. Sorry, I hope I hope it that wasn’t that bad that you muted So right now, that’s it. You’re back. Thank you.
Me and it’s yeah. I wouldn’t do that to you. So we just, I don’t know where we’re up to, what people heard. So during 2014 is when we really started to look at things. Could you go back one Maria, please? Thanks. And 166,000 there abouts was our benchmark of what what we were
Using then. And whilst I’m explaining is everyone can sort of think that our economic activity and the factory hasn’t really dropped off at all from there. So our consumption, if we hadn’t done anything, would still be about the same at the very easy things that we did were we started turning off.
We had a big drive to get people to turn off appliances that weren’t used, started turning off lights that were just being left on all day. People got into the habit of coming in and turning off lights, and I think if I remember right, that got us down
About 8% and that was just turning, turning stuff off. It wasn’t being used all the time when we started that time to look at a look at a a PV system for the roof. Uh, and we had a a look at it and I think as Richard was
Saying earlier the early days, it’s 523 panels. We could have got up on our roof. We should have given us about 130 kilowatts of of power, which was 100 and 100, and 506 kilowatts of AC into into the factory at that time.
If you could move more on at that time, we looked at it was the the price was vast and was about £200,000 which we just couldn’t couldn’t justify and particularly when we look back then we were only paying 5 1/2 or 5.4 P per kilowatt and for the power coming into the factory.
So it was it was not. It wasn’t going to stack up, but we kept it on our kept on our agenda and kept looking and kept thinking about it. Uh, I think a little interesting point there was, yes, the we were buying electricity very cheaply, but something was alluded to earlier.
The feed in tariff at that time was 14.38 P per kilowatts week. Whatever would have produced above, we could have probably subsidized our investment a bit by selling some back. So Jonathan came and gave us a gave us a bit of help as well.
So it’s back in back in 2021 and the audit I think for me was really important because I’ve been for the previous six or seven years, I’ve been campaigning quite regularly amongst the other directors in the business and to get on and let’s start getting these B.
So this truck getting the PV cells up onto the roof, but it was really hard to ever convince people that it would be an economic project to do it, something that will pay back something we’ll pay back well. And Jonathan’s report? Or the Council’s report really helped me to start overcoming
That hurdle so it it became a, particularly when we found we could get some grant funding and it became a bit of a no brainer made. It made it really possible for us in in added to that HSBC came along and gave us a green loan, which was a a lower rate of
Interest on on borrowing the balance. So the total cost was about £80,000, all All in all. The cost of the PV system was 75. We put together rough rough term 50 and they got a grant for the 24 or 25 almost as well from the Council to the cost of the
Company was 55 and on top of that HSBC gave us a lower interest loan on the on the money, which was great. There’s a picture of our our array which Richard was showing earlier. We’ve got hours on our southerly and our easterly easterly, what
Do you call faces so and we got three I think it’s 308 panels are up on our roof. So in the period between 2014 and 2021, when we actually went for the panels we had already by and taking our usage down one through turning off and then through replacements.
So every time a light was broken in the factory we worked started getting into LED every time there was something to need to replace, and we’re putting in low energy alternatives. So we’re taking this down for 166 down to about 100 down to
About 100,000 and that was output in the PV and UMM, we’re lucky that we’ve had a full year now in the factory and we’re down to 32,000 kilowatts is what we’ve had to buy in from the grid. So, you know, we’re really, really taken it down.
I think it’s an 80% reduction in what we’re, what we’re buying now and the the paybacks are coming through thick and fast on that. I think there’s lots and lots of other positives that have have come from it or go. Sorry, go back to the savings. I’ve actually got the money savings.
Sorry, just go back where? On the money savings there, so 2023, the savings on US saving 70,000 kilowatts of of electric purchase in there, the 27 per kilowatt is what we’re paying is is almost 19,000. Umm. And if we had combined the savings of everything that we’ve
Done, you know 36,000, so it it really, really made, it really makes sense and has left us me the money to do in the business to invest in other things. So a few numbers there. Our electric bill is down to 8640 a year.
As we said, you know, it’ll been four or five times more of that if we if we hadn’t done anything our calculations. So we gotta be balanced about our calculations or what I’m showing here doesn’t take into effect into account the interest
That we’re paying on the on the money that we borrowed from the bank. But it also doesn’t. We’re not selling any back to the grid at the moment because we have not been able to. We’ve not been able to get that sorted out.
I wish I’d spoken to Richard early days and found out a few things about getting a a a feed out of export meter fitted at the same time as we had our PV. So it’s a little less than I’ve learned there, but we could have had a bit of revenue back.
So if we equal, if we equal those out, I think that puts us puts us in, in, in the really where we are other wins are that we’ve got massively better lighting in the factory from putting the LED in there and creates a better creates a much
Better working environment and shows the company in a more progressive progressive light. The 42 tonnes of CO2, I’m not sure what they are. Someone probably can calculate it for me now. Official said that certain. We’ve had a year it done, but umm well that on top of what So it’s actually again.
We’re doing in terms of recycling our old castings and everything. You know, I I think really makes a good statement about what this And bring up. company is doing and and and where we’re getting into with That. it. Just going back again to the bit right to the beginning, so the I’m leaving.
Early day savings as I said it was eight, it was 8% savings are taking us down from 166 down to 153 uh. And the policy of replacing with low energy equipment, even if it’s costing a bit more, we started putting that into place
And that that really good give us a give us long term benefits and which we’re still seeing today. So switch to LED. So I’ve got. I’m probably going a bit of peace away from the PV, but this is what we’ve done here in in Wickman, so our biggest single
Use was on lighting and we slowly been changing that over the over the years. Everything we put in was LED and at the end of at the end of 21, we went for it completely and changed everything in the factory that was still on old sodium type lighting and and changed all that.
We installed a lot of PIR PIR stuff so that in corridors, washrooms and areas like that which weren’t in use all the time, the lights go on and off as you walk into an area and again we we think that’s, you know, saving us same as a lot of
Money, the cost of replacement and upgrade it at estimate. I wish I’d kept a record of it right from the beginning, but I’d say it was probably about 25,000 by the time we’re being through the factory and changed everything and upgraded everything.
And as I said before, the the lighting has been has been massively improved. You can’t believe what you put up with before you go and get these new areas everywhere, so that’s the last figures. There change reduced our usage from 166. Down to the other.
So before and after old CF you, you’re good, Maria. Thank you. Sorry it’s me confusing you. So before and after old Ellie, old and fluorescent type bundle lights, I don’t know what the exactly called, but then go on to the on to the next ones. You this is our old lighting.
If you can just click through them please on the next ones or the lights. So now in our stores and in the workshop, they’re all into new LED light and they are absolutely, you know, they’re fabulous. And we’ll see. We’ll see.
Time we’ll tell how they go on at what the life is like on them. Out our next projects? Uh, that’s why I’m just. I’m just trying to keep up this better management electricity. So these are these are the new things that we need to look at so.
Where we’ve driven down the consumption during the day, we still have about 20 kilowatts overnight, which no one is really managed to put their finger on. We’ve got a few fridges on-the-go. We’ve got a server or two servers on the go. There’s some security lights that come in off, but we’re
Still getting through 20 kilowatts overnight, which really we think is excessive and we want to try and track that down and see what we can do better with that and we have been looking at batteries and gone through and had a couple of quotes with local companies which, you know, put us great
Proposals together. But at the moment I’m still really struggling to get my head around how we’re gonna make that if we’re doing it. Looking at just in terms of money, how we’re gonna make that, how we’re gonna make it work, and now we’re gonna make it pay. It’s.
I’m not not giving up on the hope and the idea of it, but I I need to keep looking at it and hopefully batches will carry on coming down a little bit in price UH-1 here, which I’ve heard and this is not my own ideas as heard of a couple of
People talking about is. I’ve got a I’ve got a Jaguar AV and with a huge 90 kilowatt battery on it that I drive in here every day. If I could find a way of having that charged up and you know leaving it in a year’s time or two years time when everyone
Tells me it’s not worth anything. And but if I could use that battery to come back to the factory and to to power the factory overnight, or to use it in the more early in the morning or late at night to sort of go
Through the buffer when we’re not getting enough off the roof, that would, I think would be would be good and would could be a good use of it. But I’ve not got the bright I’ve not got the brains to work out,
But maybe people on here would would know how to do it onto the next one, please. That was that. This was the case for storage, so my system I think I showed before Richard has got a really nice one with his with his system.
This is one I’ve just had to do a hand, but it shows me where I’ve got deficits during the day. So between 8:00 o’clock in the morning wearing this, whenever this was this was in March sometime. So between 8:00 o’clock in the morning and 4:00 o’clock in the
Afternoon, pretty much I had the whole factory covered off. What was coming off the roof? But we can see that the time between about 7:00 o’clock and then after 4:00 o’clock we were. You know, we were using pulling it off the grid so we could use
A battery or if you use a car plugged into a circuit or something like that to cover us, I think we could get almost almost nothing and that we’re bringing in, bringing in off the grid. There’s the nice curve. There’s a nice knee near Perfect Bell curve that we’ve discussed
Earlier showing a showing a good day of production and look at that. It’s February. A year. Year ago tomorrow, year ago, in a couple of days. So which is, which is pretty fabulous. And in the summertime, that’s 250 and the summer we’re getting up to 800 kilowatt hours off the roof.
So we’re getting, you know, 4 or 500 more than we can use in a day, which we’re sending back to the grid at the moment for free onto the next one. So these these are the things that I need to look at and we
Need to look at as a business as how to sell it back to the grid and which I said should have had an export meter fitted right at the beginning, which I forgot to do. I didn’t know about doing and now is proving difficult to to work out a little device.
Sorry about going back one more. There’s a nice little device that people have been telling me about, which is called an Eddy and which we could use to heat water on site during the day using our surplus electricity, which would, which would be great a good win which we
Actually had in which has been people have been talking to us about voltage optimization and which is to bring your voltage down nearer to the the lowest end of what it should be delivered into the building app. And we’ve been looking at getting a voltage optimization
Device in here, but we then spoke to our the grid supplier in here and they came in and they looked at us and they said, well, you’re right on the border of us, switching you down and they agreed to turn our voltage down into the factory, which
Again has given us a a good saving one it saving us in that we the the, the vaults that come in all add up to what you’re paying. But the other thing is the equipment. We’ve noticed that some of our early LED lights have failed and
We’re fairly sure that’s because our voltage was was really high, so their life of them has their life of them, has has come down in terms of too much voltage going into them. So that was something that came that came along, which we hadn’t expected.
We thought we spent some money optimization, but the the grid actually helped us to get sorted, so it was good. Goodbye them as well. And that’s just saying there we had it tapped down EV charging as well. We’ve got, we’ve got one charge at the moment.
We want to get more, but we’ve got it’s a very old charge. We on here, we need to get some smart chargers in here that will actually take the surplus power off the roof and put it into the cars at the time when the sun shining.
So making the best of the the free electricity before we give it back to the grid and a big, big project that we’re gonna be looking at over the next year and and Jonathan and the team there with the counts are gonna help us is how to heat the
Factory better at the moment we got storage heaters which use a vast amount of a vast amount of gas and is very, very costly. So if anyone’s got any ideas there on how to heat big factory spaces would be really interested to find out about that.
We’ve tackled our compressed air leaked so that we found out our compressor was using a lot, was leaking a lot, a lot of the pipe work was leaking through. Fixed all the leaks and that’s bought the usage downward. Bought the amount that the compressor is working down and
Saved and manual electricity we’re using, but we we also want to look now at a more efficient compressor. So I think that just about rounds us up there. Here’s now. Now they carnation net zero and support. So Jonathan has come back after two and a bit years, three years
And done another another look at our business and where he thinks where we could get some more savings and we could we could drive down our usage of electricity and gas and make better use of our energy coming into the factory. So Destrat fans and for pushing the air down and the factory
With no repairs. We got some old Louvre windows that are, bizarrely were put in when the factory was built. That stuck now, so they don’t close, so we get. We’re pumping hot air out from our heaters, but then losing a lot of it out through our louvres infrared heaters in some
Of the areas where we we probably don’t want to heat the whole of the unit, but rather heat the person rather than the than the space the water either we just discussed there and the compressor and then and then keep looking at better, better ways of managing it. Energy.
And one thing that I’ve noticed over the cold months is that when the roller shutter doors to the big warehouse open, they’re not very quick on getting them back. And I’m pretty sure that if we put something there that turn the heating off in the factory every time the door open, the
Guys and the the employees would be really quick to go and get the door shut if they knew the heating wasn’t gonna be left on throughout it. So there’s there’s lots lots more for us to do. I think we’ve had a good go with.
We’ve really knocked into it and and got, you know, a lot of savings underway and we think there’s there’s plenty more to go out and we were quite enjoy it. It’s it’s a good, good thing to get in. I think that’s me done. Lovely. So please thank you and thank you very much.
Thank you. Thanks. Thank you very much. And just to reiterate again, I think that’s a really a really I just really tried again. good case study, a good really good local case study. It’s good to see the journey you’ve been on as well. Basically, Chris, so thanks again for for sharing that with
Us. Just a quick question from me then before we kick off actually, obviously we always talk all day long about cost savings and rightly so and it’s something that Richard alluded to the start of the actual conversation. Do you have has a demonstrated carbon reduction help you in any
Business within your supply chain at all? What? Where I’m going with that is that I’m trying to get towards the additional soft benefits of of all this sort of carbon saving as well, because I do see people that I meet in the automotive supply chain who have to demonstrate carbon savings
Year on year to keep winning orders. Does that cross your Bower talk, Chris? Or is that not on your sort of pipeline? As as yet, no it hasn’t, but we get lots and lots of sort supplier questionnaire. So people that we’re supplying to and I’ve noticed that over
The last couple of years, it’s on every single one of the surveys that I have to complete as a business into ours that people are asking us where we’re up to on on this, on energy consumption, on environmental, on our environmental policies and things like that.
So whilst I’d say no, we’re we’re never penalized for not having it, it’s certainly I think people higher up the chain than us who are being monitored a lot more closely are are doing Yeah. it. And I think I’m right now.
I think we have to put something in our order to in our accounts now or bigger groups and now I’m to put the stuff into their accounts, which goes out to the into the public domain. Good stuff. Good answer. Thank you. Uh, just, uh, dipping into the chat, Chris. Uh.
While we’re here, Craig is kindly offered to give you a free free survey for your your compressed air enquiry, your compressor inquiry. So please engage it. Does that Greg from aircraft. That’s. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So yeah, you engage, I think you’re both very local to each Yeah. other, to be fair.
Well, Craig supplied is supplied us to the compressor in the So that that that, that. beginning. That’s worked well. Richard has actually put a put a a question into the chat. If you could turn back time, would you choose not to invest it in solar panels? No, 100% I would not.
I I would have invested in solar panel panels yet and probably would have done it should it would have should have done it earlier. And as I said, I think the weight that you guys lend us by getting the report together and helped anyone that was not completely convinced or committed to it.
I think that really helps turn that, and I wish I’d done it earlier. I was very I was generally very happy with the people that we used on a lot of things. I wish there were a few questions that I’d have thought to ask.
All they had prompted me to ask them things like feedback or, you know, the cell. Back tariffs, things like getting an export meter and probably with our inverter seemed very good. But looking at again what Richard just show me with his solar edge, you know, where you showing all the consumption, Yeah.
What you’re generating and everything at the same time, I think there’s more sophisticated things on the market than than then we went for. But you live and learn. Yeah. Good. That good answer. Thank you. George Browning has just asked her a good question, actually, for for for both of you.
I want to bring you one back into this from Richard, if that’s OK. I’ll I’ll read it. I have solar PV, battery storage and EV, but be interested in adding small scale wind that could probably be switched in the summer months, plus the ability to integrate the 2X.
In this case, but it’s but the. But the technology doesn’t seem to be available at the moment or at present, though the Americans seem to be stealing a March there. Any ideas? Now we have our wind, a wind power question. Before Richard on our last session some months ago, do you
Wanna can you can you answer that one at all or is that one to come back to? When when? It depends the the. The thing is, with wind you need a complete seamless flow and I’ve looked into winds going on my own residential property and the higher you go the better.
But you wanna be away from turbulent areas as well. So you wanna good flow and This is why they’ve invested a lot into offshore wind because there’s a continuous flow without any turbulence. Not only that, but the government have actually said you can’t install wind turbines on the land, but there we are.
But it’s if you are looking at that a commercial thing that when it comes to back to that thing that and that you were saying before about the payback of it with batteries. Ah, I know. So you’ve got moving parts with solar panels. It’s a it’s a thing.
It’s it’s there, it’s stable and it you don’t have to do relatively low maintenance on those systems, but with a wind turbine it’s moving parts to the lifetime of it, maybe limited I I don’t know, I don’t know about small scale wind, but I do know
That you need to be in a turbulent free area and it needs to be a good flow of going through. Good answer. So I hope that’s giving you some guidance on that George. And and thanks again for your question. Just wrapping up then on the on Chris’s presentation.
Thanks again for for sharing that with us, Chris, for everyone, that’s that’s on the call from the business point of view. If if anyone wants to sort of have more detail on that, we’ll share the slides. A lot of information on there about how to do things and the
Opticals that Chris is overcome moving his business forward. So again, we’ll share that and I think we’ll just move on now to my little bit about the actual grants and then we’ll have a final little queue and a towards the end if anyone got any more questions to wrap up.
So just quickly to go to our program, because obviously all we’ve talked about at the moment is, is, as I say, cost and carbon saving, that’s what our our programs designed to to guide you on. So one of the slides that Chris showed on on these on his last
Presentation was what we do will identify areas where you can save money. We’ll show you the possible capital input and the possible ongoing savings for things we identify be air compressor sold so on and so forth. So that’s the service that we provide in terms of the guidance
Bit, again it’s free and then we do have grant funding available for helping to get those projects underway. Now it’s very very interesting or very, very important to state in terms of the grant funding that we’ve got from the from the
UK Government, which is which is just kicked in, it does vary by region. So if you’re a business in the West Midlands Combined Authority area, Coventry have secured a small grant funding pot that can be used for solar. Unfortunately, the pot that we’re controlling for
Warwickshire doesn’t have that mechanism built in, so the Warwickshire funding part, I’m afraid if you’re on the call and Warwickshire, it won’t be able to be used to put towards towards solar. Having said that, we’re happy to engage with you anywhere because we’re very pro solar.
We’re happy to guide you where we can, even though you can’t get a grant. The phrase I use is grant or no grant. It’s worth looking at so if we can help with that, we will do so. I think to summarize that get in touch, we’ll have a further
Conversation with these part of our triage process and we’ll guide you more accurately once we know about your exact location and exact requirements as to what money is available. So so get into each basically. Next slide please, Maria. OK. I think we’ll just move to the next one that sort of I’ve
Already summarised that one Maria. So just move to the next slide if that’s OK. So if you are interested and hopefully some of the people on the call are just to talk you through how to register with us. So first of all, you’ll need to fill out a registration form
Which will share on one of the latest slides. Then we carry out that triage. I’ve just mentioned where we’ll give you a call and talk you through the program and what you’re looking for. Check your eligibility and so on. Then we come to the actual site.
Visit if we can just move on, please, Maria. Yeah. So the site visit is the energy assessment that I’ve done for for Chris. You saw on the previous slides that is free damage your energy usage. We go through all your bills and then we’ll start to recommend
Things to get that energy usage down on site and provide you tangible figure to show you how much you can save. And we’ll give you those recommendations for whatever we’re identifying, be it solar, be it new boiler, be it LED lighting so on and so forth.
You will then need to go out and get quotations as a business, there’s no restrictions on who you use. Typically, though, we do need three quotes, which most companies get anyway to be fair, but we need three quotes to support your application and then we take you to the application process.
Now in terms of the grant funding, it’s up to 100,000 pounds is available depending on the program of grants funding. We’ll put you under. We can talk you through that when we speak to you and part of that initial triage, but it’s up to 100,000 pounds based on a 50% intervention.
So you put in half and we put in heart basically. So it’s very much worth it and the program we’re running at the moment is running till March 2025. So you still got time. Please engage and we can. We can get involved and see if we can help you.
Basically, next slide, please, Maria. So a couple of other little nice benefits of joining our program, the green Business Network, which is very, very popular. We get asked a lot from people that want to engage with the companies and learn about things that are coming up. Join our network. It’s free.
You’ll get our newsletter. You’ll get a chance to network with other companies that are like minded and so on, and you’ll hear from us first of all about things that are changing and things that are available. So jump on that quickly. Next slide, please, Maria. Ah, the podcast. Yes.
So we also like to to share our knowledge and get industry experts and and people on our on our on our podcast that I that I I host as well we try and do one a month and as you would expect it’s on various things that are of interest.
So we’ve done them on solar before. We’ve done them on heat pumps, so on and so forth. So scan that QR code and it will take you to the place where you can download them and sign up to those they are.
They are good and the last one we did last week was on carbon accounting. I basically seem Warwick called Data Graphics had a really good chat with him about their journey in very much the same vein as Chris has just talking us through it or talks us
Through, but about how they do things and what they put in place to go on their own net zero journey. So have a listen. I think they’re great. See what you think. Next slide, please, Maria. Ohh yeah, this is a good one actually. Now when we’re out with businesses recommending things,
Very often, the first thing that people ask us is where do I go to to get a quote for what you’re recommending? Basically, now we’re not allowed as accountable to recommend a particular supplier because we have to stay in PowerShell. But as a business, if you wanna go on our directory, you’re more
Than welcome to join and it flags you and your services. And as a company looking for suppliers jump on our directory and there’s a lot of information on there basically about about how to engage with with different businesses basically. OK. Next slide, please, Maria. OK. Well, that’s that’s it.
What I’ll quickly do to be found then we’re a little bit over. I’ll just if there’s any more questions in the chat before we call it a day. Umm. OK. So nice comments. Thank you for your comments, Colin. Yeah, that’s the Claire’s kindly put the details in about the
Podcast in the chat, which is great. Yes. And then just finally to wrap up, we have an event this coming Thursday after tomorrow at the Village hotel very similar to this. We’ve got some really good case studies from 2 local businesses and we’re also there to talk face to face about the grant
Funding. So if you are interested, join via the link. Would love to see you. We’re giving away free breakfast and free coffee as well. If, if that tickles your fancy, so please join and we’ll look forward to seeing you there. If you can make it. Yeah. And that’s it.
We’ll start to wrap up then. So so first of all, thank you to our speakers for giving up their time today and we’re going through their their experiences so far. If it is of interest to join the program, you’ve got the links to our registration forms and so on.
Thank you all for joining today. I hope you found it of interest. We’ll send out the webinar recording, we’ll send out the slides and we’ll send out that feedback form to you as well. So thanks for. Thank you everybody for joining and I’ll hopefully see you all soon. Thank you.
Thank you everybody. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Gerard.