by Chris Wright
Growing up in Rhoscolyn, Chris has been involved in the family business all his life. This has shaped his passion for adventure and a determination to show that business can be a force for good. Working for many years as a kayak coach and then running a sustainable tourism consultancy and latterly running a Community Interest Company near Llanberis. Chris has now returned to the business to lead on decarbonisation and wider sustainability projects.
It Really is Sunny Here!
Being this far west, on a small island, off a smallish island, partly contributes to Ynys Môn being one of the sunniest parts of the UK. The Met Office station, just over the water in Valley, records an annual average of 1,674hrs of sunshine. According to the Global Solar Atlas our part of the west coast of Anglesey has an annual photovoltaic (PV) output of 1,064kWh per kWp of installed capacity. i.e. how many kilowatt hours of power you can expect to generate per panel (modern panels are around 500w output per panel). This figure is 137w higher than, for example, Manchester. I'm not even going to say how many more hours of sunshine we get than Manchester!
These are "perfect world" figures and in reality the performance of solar PV systems is impossible to predict with any real certainty, dependant on a number of factors including how much shading of panels occurs.
We have had ground mounted solar photovoltaic panels since 2011, so can attest to the real world output they are capable of producing. To date these panels have generated an average of 7,952kWh of electricity per annum.
Buying gas is bad, burning it in inefficient and polluting boilers is even worse!
With the average UK household using 2,700kWh of electricity each year (and a further 11,500 kWh of gas), we can see the scale of how much energy we require to run our business. This coming year we expect to consume at least 55,573kWh of electricity across the site.
Buying Gas is Bad!
I sometimes think that solar panels are the modern day equivalent of seizing the means of production. If we can produce our own zero-emission renewable energy, we are cutting out large parts of the global energy systems that have previously enjoyed monopoly control of how that energy is distributed and priced. Not to mention a whole host of additional negative externalities. Buying gas is bad, burning it in inefficient and polluting boilers is even worse!
If we can ditch old fashioned gas boilers, which historically have run at as low as 60-70% efficiency (1kW of gas in 0.6-0.7 kW of heat out) and instead use super efficient Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP), capable of efficiencies of 450% (1kW of electricity in, 4.5 kW of heat out), we can utilise our own renewable energy to keep the buildings comfortable year round and produce lots of lovely hot water too, Vive la revolution!
What we’ve installed…
In November 2023 we installed 28 Roof Mounted Eurener 415W, panels giving an installed capacity of 11.62kWp - knowing what we know about how much sun hits our bit of Anglesey, these panels should generate circa 12,000kWh of electricity.
This solar array is connected to a Myenergi 5kW hybrid Libbi Inverter, which in turn is connected to 20kWh of battery storage.
In November 2024 we also upgraded our original ground mounted panels to take advantage of the increase in output that modern solar panels provide. Without changing the footprint of these ground mounted arrays, we now have 30 x Eurener 500W bi-facial panels giving an installed capacity of 15kWp - these are forecast to generate circa 16,000kWh of electricity.
With an onsite total installed capacity of 26.62kWp we now have the potential to generate 28,364 kWh each year. In the real world, we expect this to be closer to 22,000kWh. Whilst this would represent close to 50% of our consumed electricity, we are a long way from being off-grid. As we de-commission more gas boilers and shift kWh of gas to electricity, our consumption will only go up. Combined with more EV's requiring charging on site, we will need to carefully balance how and when we consume this precious energy.
What are we going to do with all this power? The screenshots below show that at 12:36 on 4th June the system:
- was generating 9.6kW of electricity (the second array on site was also producing 8.4kW)
- was using 2.9kW in the buildings
- had already topped up battery storage to 100%
- had already topped up the hot water tanks to 100%
- had enough spare to be charging an electric car
Even my drive home was powered by Rhoscolyn sunshine!
For those who want to know more, the next blog will go into more detail on the systems we have implemented to get to this point and how we plan to completely phase out our reliance on burning gas on site.
Give me a shout on your next visit if you would like a more in depth view of how the system works.