Pagham Village Hall goes solar

87 solar panels have recently been installed at Pagham Village Hall.

Philip Coleman, Chairman of Pagham Village Hall Trust, said:

“The Hall has a large south-facing roof and is situated on the edge of a town with the best sunshine record on the English mainland – ideal for solar power. The Trustees decided to invest some cash reserves in a sustainable energy system in order to reduce the Hall’s carbon footprint and to reduce future electricity bills and generate an income through the feed-in tariff, which is paid for exporting electricity to the grid. The solar panels form a 23.6Kw photovoltaic system, with estimated payback within six years, based on predicted performance and feed-in tariff calculations

“We are fortunate to have a Trustee, John Carr, who was a civil engineer and able to research and manage the project. The solar panels were installed by Arundel-based Trienergy Solutions Ltd at short notice in the run-up to Christmas in order to beat an end-of-year reduction in the feed-in tariff for new installations. They achieved this with no disruption to the operation of the busy village hall.

“It is early days to know whether the predicted payback will be achieved, but we can see that on days of strong sunshine, we are meeting nearly all our day-time electricity requirements from the solar panels and generating a healthy surplus to export to the grid.

“The project has been supported by a grant of £9,879 from the Inspire Leisure Grant Fund, operated by Action in Rural Sussex, which has met just under one third of the costs”.