One of the largest roof-top solar arrays in the East of England has been installed by the Lincoln-based solar installer, Freewatt at John Saul Ltd farm, near Boston.
The farm’s cold storage and packhouse building now sports over 1,000 Conergy Powerplus modules that will help keep half a million cabbages at a steady temperature of under 1oC before they are turned into coleslaw by processors and sold at supermarkets across the UK.
The project utilised a new Conergy fixing system in order to mount the array across the East/West facing roof. Freewatt estimates that the uncommon orientation of the array will still produce enough electricity to cover a third of the farm’s energy demand – saving £20,000 a year on its electricity bill.
More importantly, the farm will dramatically reduce its carbon footprint my more than 100 tonnes a year for the lifetime of the system.
“We are investing for the future of the business. It is a huge commitment but we are confident it is a sound investment and I know we’ll look back in years to come and be glad we took this step,” said Farm Director Paul Freeman.
“We opted to use Freewatt because they were honest, didn’t give us sales patter, clearly knew the technology well and we were confident they would still be around if we had problems ten years from now.”
“The John Saul Ltd project was rewarding to do because it not only broke boundaries in terms of its size but involved using cutting edge engineering which hasn’t been used anywhere else in the county,” said Freewatt MD Julian Patrick.
“We have been involved in lots of heritage projects before and albeit the panels are on a new building we feel as if we have played a part in both writing the history and securing the future of the business.”