Solar panels on a narrow metal rooftop
The solar installation at Fera. Image: Fera/Meson

Fera Science has chosen electrical engineering specialist Meson Electrical to install a custom solar installation on the roof of its York campus.

Fera Science is a biotech firm specialising in plant and bee health and sustainable agriculture, and its York Biotech Campus contains large roof vents, which necessitate a custom solar installation solution.

Meson is providing 342 N-Type solar modules for the rooftop of the York Biotech Campus, which will produce an output of 150kWp. The two firms estimate that once the installation is complete, Fera Science will save roughly £24,000 each year on its energy bills.

Construction on the project began in June and is expected to be completed by October.

“Solar panels are a great investment for companies looking to reduce overall carbon footprint and save on energy bills,” said James Hennigan, managing director at Meson.

“For this project, our solution had to be carefully designed to navigate the vents and other roof obstructions on site. We carried out a full on-site analysis and collaborated with our trusted structural engineering partner to create a solution that integrates seamlessly into the existing infrastructure and allows for ongoing routine maintenance.”

Dean Betteridge, lead business analyst at Fera added: “We couldn’t have chosen a better partner to work with for this project. Meson worked with us right from the initial tender stage to validate the proposal, and to design a solution that would work.”

Businesses looking to the sun

An increasing number of businesses are looking to solar PV installations in order to decarbonise their operations and save their firms money.

In August, GB NRG announced that it had successfully completed 2MW of solar PV installations on all 15 of Crendon Timber Engineering’s sites across the UK. The largest of these installations at Crendon’s site in St Ives, Cornwall, saw 1,398 400W PV panels installed, providing a total 573kW of capacity and generating 485,000kWh of power per annum, generating a CO2 reduction of 111.5 tons each year.

Meanwhile, motorhome dealership Erwin Hymer Centre Travelworld installed 300 solar panels on the rooftop of its flagship sales centre in Stafford, which expected to generate around 85,000kWh of electricity each year, around 8,000kWh of which will be fed back into the UK grid.

Bristan Group, one of the UK’s largest manufacturers of kitchen and bathroom products, is also jumping on the trend. The firm successfully installed 1,666 solar panels at its head office in Tamworth, Staffordshire, providing around 600kWh of electricity, enough to cover around 56% of the site’s power needs.