Mitsubishi supplies Solar PV for church
Having heard from a BBC ‘Songs of praise’ feature on the installation of solar photo-voltaic panels on St Denys Church in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the former warden of All Saints Church at Wing with Grove in Buckinghamshire, Martin Findlay, paid a visit. That visit led to the installation of 54 solar PV panels from Mitsubishi Electric to reduce the carbon footprint of St Denys Church and generate an annual income under the Government’s Feed-in Tariff.
The £50 000 investment will generate an annual income of about £3000 from energy sold to the National Grid.
Both systems were installed by Freewatt, a leading solar PV installer in Lincolnshire. The company has developed a method of attaching PV arrays to church roofs that helps comply with planning permission. At All Saints Church, the panels were installed on the south-facing nave and south aisle roofs and hidden from view behind the parapet. As every I-Spyer will know, the length of a church runs from west to east, so it is likely to have large areas of south-facing roof.
Martin Findlay, who led the project, said, ‘We wanted to support the Church of England’s national environmental campaign called Shrinking the Footprint. In the light of the current global climate-change crisis, we thought that, in addition to praying at services for Christians to look after God’s creation, the church should take action to reduce its carbon footprint.’
The PCC began a feasibility study into the scheme and then began to raise funds, get special permission from the diocese to carry out the work and planning permission from Aylesbury Vale District Council. Martin Findlay than contacted Freewatt.
Julian Patrick, managing director of Freewatt, said, ‘Martin was impressed with the work we had carried out at St Denys and asked if we could see how feasible it would be for All Saints. We have worked extensively on sensitive historic buildings, which is why we developed out unique clamping system, so I knew we could help as soon as we saw the church.’
