New Solar Panel Array at Easton Business Centre

In recent years we have introduced several measures to reduce our impact on the environment; using 100% renewable electricity contracts across all the buildings we own, ensuring 25% of our gas comes from green sources, steadily replacing the vast majority of our lighting to energy-saving LEDs, improving and expanding bike storage facilities and replacing our diesel van with a 100% electric van to name a few.

In 2020, before the pandemic hit, we agreed on our main goals for the next 5 years and one of these was to do more to tackle the climate emergency. Easton Business Centre is by far our biggest location with over 26,000 sq ft of lettable space and the largest consumer of energy, so in early 2021 we decided to install a second and much larger PV Solar Array to reduce our carbon footprint.

A Helping Hand

One of our customers at Easton Business Centre, Clean Energy Prospector (CEPRO), is at the forefront of renewable energy technologies.

Many thanks to CEPRO Founder, Damon Rand, for his advice about the different options available and for guiding us through the technology.

After careful consideration, we opted for a 50 kW array comprising 130 solar panels which were installed by local company Ecocetera in October. We expect to make savings of 11,700kg of carbon per year, which is a combination of using the energy produced by the panels and exporting excess energy to the grid.

Infrastructure Improvements Needed

We had anticipated that we would extend the number of panels in the future with the aim of Easton Business Centre becoming a net-zero building. We have another large roof that is in a prime spot for solar panels, but the local electrical infrastructure currently in place makes this ambition unviable.

These issues are being witnessed in the largest economies in the world because the current electrical equipment cannot cope with the extra electricity being produced. This phenomenon is very well described in this recent article, noting “Much of the equipment on the electric grid was built decades ago and was not designed for the two-way flow of power that is becoming more common as solar panels become more popular.”…”The problem: The local utility’s equipment is so overloaded that there is no place for the electricity produced by the panels to go.”

In our case in Bristol, Western Power told us the solar panels would ‘fry’ the local cables if they didn’t put a limit on how much electricity we exported back to the grid. The other option is battery storage but this technology is still in its infancy and prohibitively costly.

Bristol’s Clean Air Zone is set to be introduced in the Summer of 2022 by the local government and will create a boost for local businesses and private individuals to change old diesel vehicles to hybrid or 100% electric, as well as spurring more green initiatives. However, without significant investment by the central government, businesses like ours will be hampered by an old electrical infrastructure that is no longer fit for purpose and fails to tackle the climate emergency with the urgency that’s required.

It is vital small businesses make their voice heard if current and future workspaces are going to protect the environment.