York Community Energy is celebrating three more schools soaking up the sun’s rays to power classrooms with clean energy.
Archbishop Holgate’s School (Pictured in drone shot) is the latest to benefit from rooftop solar panels, becoming one of the top solar schools in the UK!
The partnership between York Community Energy and Solar for Schools marked its first success last year when solar panels were installed at Clifton Green Primary School.
This year has seen installations on three more schools across the city:
Lord Deramore’s Primary School, Huntington Primary Academy and now Archbishop Holgate’s School.
Over 1,850 panels have been installed across the four sites, providing a generating capacity of around 760kWp and avoiding 132 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. Archbishop Holgate’s School will now be getting around 30% of its electricity from its own roof, with an anticipated saving of around £38,000 in the first year, and almost £2 million over 25 years.
Marie Townsley, headteacher of Archbishop Holgate’s School, said, “Sustainability is a key consideration in all our planning at Archbishop Holgate’s.
“We have a long term commitment to energy conservation, so we’re delighted that we have been able to collaborate with York Community Energy and Solar for Schools to have such an incredible solar installation that will provide long term benefits to both the school and the wider local community.”
The panels have been installed by Solar for Schools, the experts in developing solar for schools and other educational institutions across the UK.
As well as low carbon electricity and a reduction in energy bills, they offer an accompanying educational programme using real data from the school’s panels. The array at Archbishop Holgate’s is the largest they have installed anywhere in the country so far, and we think it may be in the top five at any school in the country.
Both York Community Energy and the City of York Council have been supporting this work locally, reaching out to schools across the city and supporting them through the process.
Richard Lane, a director of York Community Energy, said, “We’re really glad to see these installations start to mount up. We’re working with several more schools and expect to see more arrays next year, but there are still lots more schools across York that we think could benefit from rooftop panels.”
Robert Schrimpff, CEO of Solar for Schools said: “The installation at Archbishop Holgate’s represents another landmark in the decarbonisation of the education sector.
“We hope that more schools will take inspiration from each successful project, enabling us to work with them to educate and inspire students on energy and decarbonisation, so society can reach net Zero sooner.”
Interested schools can contact [email protected] or reach out to Solar for Schools directly at [email protected].