Dorset History Centre is a prestigious county building in Dorchester, offering a wide range of services to the local community whilst focusing on preserving and providing access to records relating to the county of Dorset, its people and places. Due to extensive electricity costs related to the functions of the services provided, the Dorset County Council were looking to find a renewable solution to reduce these costs for the Centre. A.P. Chant were invited to tender for a large scale solar PV installation to help solve this problem.
After a detailed survey three south facing roofs were deemed appropriate to install solar PV, other roofs being ruled out due to shading and orientation issues.
The three suitable roofs were quoted as follows:
Roof 1 consisting of a 13kWp system made up of 52 modules in portrait, arranged as 3 rows avoiding roof vents.
Roof 2 consisting of an 18kWp photovoltaic solar system made up of 52 modules, arranged as two rows of 26 panels in a portrait setting.
Roof 3 consisting of a 9.54kWp system made up of 36 modules, with three rows of landscape set modules.
This created an overall installation of 40.54kWp, with 156 modules over three roofs.
Canadian Solar 250 watt full black monocrystalline modules were chosen due to the high energy yield, outstanding low-light performance and high quality of the modules. Their aesthetic appeal was also of importance along with their 25 year performance warranty.
To enable this installation to take place an extensive upgrade to the existing electrical infrastructure was required. This included the upgrade of the current electric mains board and an installation of a new supply to the loft area. The installation itself needed to be considerate of the daily running of the centre to ensure there was minimum disruption to the services being provided.
‘We at Dorset History Centre were very keen to install renewable energy technology for a variety of reasons. Firstly, we have a large roof space, which appeared to provide the perfect location for panels; secondly, historically we have used high levels of energy due to our need to provide high quality preservation conditions for the collections we manage, and we were advised that our systems would use up a high percentage (possibly all of the output) of the energy produced, thus the installation represents an ‘invest to save’ case study; thirdly, as a consequence of the previous point, we were keen to reduce our carbon footprint and this is a major step in that direction.
Lastly, but very significantly, we were dependent on DCC’s support for this project; the authority has financed most of the capital cost which it will recoup in the forthcoming years.
We are very pleased with the panels and hope that they will make a real contribution to our energy efficiency. The installation was undertaken very professionally and was completed on schedule with very little impact on our daily operations here at DHC.’
