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.”

Withington Village Hall is fairly new: like many village halls it was built in 1999 as a millennium project and so is fairly energy efficient. It serves a community with lots of regular activity groups who rely on its facilities and has a proactive committee who think ahead to ensure the building has a sustainable future.

With this aim in mind, Solarkinetics was the chosen provider when the committee opted to install a solar array on the hall roof. The curved shape of the roof made this an interesting project for us and we were able to come up with a design which we felt suited this modern look. We were able to help with identifying sources of loan funding and after a successful application had been made, we were ready to start work

Given its public location, the challenges for us in this situation were ensuring that the necessary safety measures for our installers, scaffolding and so on, were made inaccessible to members of the public out of hours and working during the day in an unobtrusive way to allow the various activities taking place to carry on undisturbed by our presence.

The 10kW array was installed without any problem in April 2015 and the hall users are now benefitting from their increased energy efficiency.

For many years Garway has had a well-loved village hall, used year-round for community events. It was built in the 1930’s and demands on its facilities led a forward thinking village hall committee to plan for the future. A new Passivhaus standard building, designed by architects Simmonds Mills, is the first community centre of this kind in Herefordshire. Passivhaus is based on proven robust, high performance, low environmental impact construction methods, lighting, heating and ventilation systems and materials. The objective is to construct a comfortable building with minimal running costs.

Solarkinetics was approached at the start of the project to design a solar pv plan for the roof which was delivered in two stages, with the roof panels fitted in October 2017, then internal electrical works and commissioning in the Spring of 2018. Because the building was built using grants from public funding it is not eligible for the feed-in tariff.  Even so, the hall should save over £1,000 every year on electricity running costs.

The new building was built with assistance from the Big Lottery Fund, the Trusthouse Charitable Foundation, the Post Code Lottery and Awards for All. We were delighted to attend the official opening on April 7th 2018 when the ribbon was cut by the High Sheriff of Herefordshire, The Reverend Lady Lisvane. On a grey, chilly day the assembled folk enjoyed tea, cake and local cider and beers in a beautiful light and airy space, one which will serve their community for many years to come, without costing the earth to run.

In common with most schools, the governors are looking for ways to cut the running costs of the premises, particularly energy costs and saw the potential of this roof space.

Support from the local authority and the Diocese of Cardiff saw the project given the go ahead and the installation took place in October 2013. It was hoped to carry out the work during half term, but this was not possible, so with some careful pre-planning the installation was done whilst the children were in school.

Despite a few disruptions in class due to heavy footfalls on the roof during lessons, everything went to plan and the solar panels were generating power for the school within a week.

We later returned to Our Lady’s to address the assembled children and their teachers about renewable energy and how their actions at school level were significant on a wider scale. In the first year of generation, we reviewed the performance of the system and in common with most of the arrays we have installed so far, it has exceeded expectations.

The solar system was financed using a local authority loan which is on track to be paid off in year 6. This leaves the school with reduced electricity bills for the foreseeable future and an additional income for the remaining 14 years or so of the feed-in tariff period.