Council Estate Roofs In Solihull, Near Birmingham, Installed With Solar Cells

It is one of the most extensive solar cell projects in the country.  Thirty seven roofs have now been equipped with solar cells in Solihull, near Birmingham.  It is a project which has been put into practice by Solihull Community Housing (SCH) in order to benefit high rise buildings.

One of the high rise buildings in Solihull, near Birmingham, which will benefit from solar panels

This is only the latest project by SCH in order to save money on energy bills by reducing the quantity of electricity produced from fossil fuels.  From previous schemes they have already saved £28,000 and with the introduction of these new solar panels, that number will soon increase dramatically.  Of course it should not be forgotten the benefit to the environment as well, with this new scheme alone set to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide produced by the buildings by over two thousand tonnes overall.  This does not mean of course that the solar panels will be able to supply all the electricity that the buildings need, but it will lead to a lot of savings.

In fact the net monetary savings will be arriving sooner than they would otherwise, due to the fact that 75% of the costs from installation were covered by grants.  One of these was from the Low Carbon Buildings Program, and a selection of other grants meant that the only outlay needed to install the photovoltaic cells was just 25% of the total cost.

Although individuals cannot normally apply for such grants, installing solar energy panels still leads to savings.  There will be the reduction in energy bills once the solar panels have been installed on your property, as well as a further monetary benefit with the government’s feed-in tariff scheme.  This scheme has been mentioned on many occasions in previous posts, but it is worth going over it again.  It means that extra electricity that you generate, which you do not use, will be fed back into the national grid, and you will get paid for that.  This will be in effect for at least 25 years, enough time for initial installation costs to be completely repaid, so that profit will then begin to be made.

Everyone is interested in saving the planet as well of course.  Even large corporations, for which profit motivation sometimes outweighs everything else, need a planet on which to operate.  Solar panels in this country at the moment, however, do not cause that tension.  You do not need to choose between saving money and saving the planet.  It does require a bit of long term thinking however, as the initial cost of installation is not insignificant.  Savings will begin to be made immediately however, and eventually those savings will become profit.  For this reason, there has never been a better time to have solar panels installed.

As the people behind the SCH project also point out, non-renewable fuel costs are set to keep rising, meaning that the savings from having solar panels will only continue to increase.  As this can be done at the same time as reducing your carbon footprint, solar panels are one of the best investments you can make not only for you, but for generations to come.