Could your business save costs & carbon with solar?
With business energy costs rising and decarbonisation becoming a mainstay of customer expectations, solar power on commercial property rooftops has a major role to play and is an increasingly attractive investment proposition in its own right.
Commercial solar in the UK
The United Kingdom has a long and complicated relationship with solar power, it has some of the largest solar farms in the world yet for a long time had one of the lowest rates of rooftop solar installations. However, this is rapidly starting to change, with equipment and installation costs decreasing by as much as 60% from 2010, swift rises in energy costs, and expectations that businesses opt for sustainable operations all coming together to create such a surge in demand that supply chains are creaking under the pressure; a good thing for an industry that used to primarily survive on government grant funding.
What businesses should expect
Businesses can now expect rooftop solar systems to pay back in as little as 3 years if they have a suitable roof and are exposed to high energy bills, especially if they have the opportunity to generate surplus energy and sell this back to the grid, with sale prices of up to 50p/kWh currently being agreed.
Grants and funding opportunities for SMEs (such as LoCASE across the South East) are helping to provide further opportunities for smaller businesses to benefit from the reduced energy costs and decarbonisation credentials that solar PV provides whilst shorter payback periods mean even those on relatively short leases are able to confidently make the investment.
A data-led approach to decision making
Key to making the decision to invest in solar is understanding the solar potential of the rooftop itself against the business’s individual energy demand profile. To accomplish this, it’s important to accurately predict how much power a rooftop can produce over each hour of the day throughout the year. This is then matched against a business’s energy profile to predict how much electricity the business will draw from the solar and how much will be exported back to the grid (known as surplus).
By taking a data-led approach, a high degree of certainty can be provided over business cases, enabling investment decisions to be confidently taken and benefits realised as soon as possible.
CASE STUDY
KENNETH DIBBEN HOUSE – UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON SCIENCE PARK
The University of Southampton Science Park is a big step closer to reaching Net Zero in scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 2030 with its new rooftop solar system on a multi-tenanted building housing offices and R&D laboratories.
From the initial solar survey using our unique LiDAR and AI solar potential analysis, allowing data-led decision-making, through to the installation and final switch-on, Absolar is proud to have supported the Science Park on its journey so far and delivered a turnkey installation.
The University of Southampton Science Park is on target to generate 207MWh of electricity and save 50 tonnes of carbon annually with this system alone, with more systems in planning.
Absolar uses its award-winning AI-based technology to provide businesses and property portfolios with the clarity and tools needed to make data-led decisions about investment in solar, providing turnkey installations where solar makes sense.
To find out if your business or portfolio could benefit from solar, contact:
02382 680106 • [email protected] • www.absolar.co.uk
