The rooftop solar array consists of 13,860 panels and is the second largest such array on a single building. It is owned and operated through a 20-year power purchase agreement by Addison Energy Ltd and will save Lyreco over £53,000 ($76,600) per year in electricity costs, generating around 3.22 GWh of energy every year.
The system will also cut Lyreco’s carbon footprint by 1,700 tonnes of carbon dioxide, thereby making the site carbon-neutral with regard to electricity. The array uses large central inverters that are more commonly found on solar farms. This is the first time that ground mounted centralised inverter technology has been brought up on to a rooftop.
“As it’s a funded project, we needed to deliver a turnkey installation fit for purpose for years to come” said James Sutton, site Project Manager for EvoEnergy. “We carried out the work in seven phases, with rope-access teams working ahead of our installers to make each workspace safe beforehand. With similar large-scale projects to our name already, we were equipped to keep work moving on-site at a steady, continuous pace. Our technical team, meanwhile, had the forward thought to propose the sue of two large ABB 1.56 MW central inverters, often used in ground mount installations, mounted adjacent to the building, saving Lyreco the space of more than 100 regular string inverters.”
Nick Dacey, Logistics Director for Lyreco, added that it had recently become obvious that solar panel technology had reached a point where it would be economic for the company to engage with it.
The array took 6 months to construct with installers working through the wettest December on record in the UK but still delivering on schedule. Over 100 miles of cabling was used for the project, the equivalent of a single cable running from Birmingham to London.
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