St Michael’s Hospice, Herefordshire

Since 1984, St Michael’s Hospice has supported Herefordshire providing palliative and respite care for people with terminal illness and those closest to them.

One of their key goals is to be a sustainable organisation and over the years the buildings have grown and been redeveloped. The newest part of the hospice was opened in 2015: designed by local firm of Architects, Architype, it was chosen as one of the six winners in the 2017 RIBA West Midlands awards. The Project architect, Paul Neep, received the RIBA Project Architect of the Year Award.

The hospice uses a lot of energy in its buildings year-round and has installed charge points for electric vehicles as many of the nurses operating from the site are now carrying out home visits in company electric vehicles.

So, for Solarkinetics, the challenge was to install a solar PV system to provide the green energy required by the organisation which enhanced the lovely curved roof of the refurbished building.

Technically this presented quite a challenge as the main roof area considered most suitable was not only pitched, quite normal, but also curved, so the combination of which is most unusual, if not unique! It was certainly a first for us.

The design we came up with was able to maximise this space with careful planning at the design stage and when the work was carried out in April 2018, all went to plan. The only hold-ups were a day abandoned due to rain, as the install seemed to take place in one of the wettest weeks of an already wet Spring.

Everything is now up and running and the SolarEdge monitoring portal enables the hospice team to see every day how much they are saving by generating a significant part of their own electricity.

In 2018 Solarkinetics were thrilled to win the REC Installation of the Year award for the St Michael’s Hospice installation.

2024 Update:

Since the solar was installed in 2018, the amount of electricity generated and with it the income received through the Feed in Tariff (FiT) has exceeded the hospice’s expectations.

“We have been delighted with our solar installation, in addition to performing perfectly, it really enhances the building which is an usual thing to say about solar panels,” commented Mike Keel, Chief Executive, St Michael’s Hospice.

“We especially like the app that allows us to see what’s going on and how the system is performing. We would definitely use Solarkinetics again if we ever need more panels.”