A Warm Space for Winter : Refuge during power cuts

14 Jan

We are delighted to announce that thanks to being awarded a grant from SSEN Powering Communities to Net Zero Fund, BCH has been able to install the solar battery system we hoped for. This solar battery system will help reduce Hub running costs and reduce our carbon footprint. This is a fantastic step and we are so grateful to SSEN for this grant.

Our Energy Performance Certificate for the Bromham Community Hub building is classified as “A” rating and we are delighted with the construction methods used to have achieved this brilliant rating. Installing the battery system does not improve this rating – we checked – but an EPC A rating is extremely good.

Now we have had the solar battery system installed in the Hub, we can now offer you a place to come to if there is a power cut in the village. We also want the Hub to be regarded a “warm space” through the winter months for all villagers to come, to help keep warm, on colder days.

For the installation of the batteries we employed Net Eco a local company to install the battery system. Net Eco is a small company based in Chippenham/Trowbridge that installed the solar panels on the two roofs of the Hub for Rigg Construction as part of the main contract. In our grant application we deliberately requested that Net Eco install the battery system to ensure it would integrate fully onto our newly installed solar panel system and so Net Eco could then take full responsibility for the combined system during the warranty period.

Net Eco on hearing of our successful grant application and the part they would play, then made contact with “Fox” the battery supplier and together they offered us an improved specification with more storage capacity for the same amount of funding, which is wonderful.

For the technically minded, on Bromham Community Hub we have 86 All Black Bifacial Mono solar panels with a total installed capacity of 43kW mounted over two roofs, these collect sunlight and turn it into Direct Current (DC) electricity. These then connect to an inverter turning DC into the AC (alternating current) we all use daily.

Thanks to the new battery installation, the inverter now also connects to a 46.1kWh Fox battery storage system and should reduce our electricity bills by a further 28% compared with a solar system only.

Overall we should reduce electricity consumption from the grid by 61%, only needing to buy 39%. In addition, during the summer particularly, we will sell excess electricity generated back to the grid and reduce our energy costs further. This will make a huge difference to the economic viability of the new community hub business and is very important to us.

We would like to say thank you to