School leads way in reducing bills

I LOVE it when a plan comes to fruition. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a bright idea move from a vague concept to the finished product.

For those of us on Henley Town Council’s climate and nature emergency working group, our vision is to see homes and organisations be warm, cosy, environmentally friendly and cheap to heat.

So it was with pleasure that I visited Trinity Primary School last week to inspect their new solar panels, which were installed over the summer holidays.

These are part of an upgrade designed to make the school more environmentally friendly and reduce its energy bills and carbon footprint. This has become ever more important as the school’s energy costs have climbed by 300 per cent over the past few years.

In 2021, the working group was happy to help Trinity kick off its environmental journey by using some of our funds to sponsor an energy audit for the school, which was undertaken by Oxford Brookes University.

The Trinity audit made a number of recommendations from the cheap and simple — upgrading lighting to LED, adding insulation and a timer to the hot water heater, to the more complex and expensive — an air source heating and solar panels.

The school chose to start with the two easiest and most cost-effective measures by installing LED lighting and roof mounted photovoltaic solar panels. LED lighting is a particularly straightforward way to reduce your energy spend as it can be done piecemeal, the upfront cost is low and can often be done yourself. The school has now replaced 95 per cent of its lighting and is looking forward to savings of £700 per year as a result.

The solar panels were a bigger undertaking. Building a business case, convincing the governors and creating an application for grant funding can be daunting. But the town council was happy to lend support in the shape of Councillor Tony Hoskins who, having been chairman of the Reading Community Energy Society, has experience in building business cases for solar installations.

Tony said: “For successful panel installation there is a need to assess both the potential physical locations to maximise generation as well as to assess the potential solar use and solar consumption each month.”

The governors, led by Paul Haines and parent Joseph Nicholson, and staff met with solar suppliers to get ideas and costs and, after a full tendering process, the school decided to go forward with a 15,500kWh installation by Solar 4 Business at a cost of £20,000.

The school managed to raise the funds for the panels through a mixture of capital grants and a £4,000 contribution from the town council, which provided the final part of the funding needed.

The system will save the school between £4,500 and £9,000 per annum, depending on the weather, giving a payback time of five years or even less. This is wonderful news. Not only for the climate but for the pupils as it means freeing up funds for other uses within the school.

Henley is blessed with wonderful schools and a college and our working group would love to see the Trinity solar panels as being just the start of a solar revolution for them. Talking to Trinity it’s clear that part of the barrier is knowledge and expertise in a small school to get over the hurdle of creating the business case and applying for funding.

But now Trinity has done it, let’s hope other schools will be inspired to follow. Trinity is keen to share its experience with others and the working group is willing to help.