Wellacre Academy

Wellacre Academy in Flixton, Greater Manchester, is believed to possess the largest solar array on a school in Britain and the 1,720 panels will generate a saving of £2,168,307 over the next quarter of a century. The 760 pupil school, did the maths and found that using their existing electricity supplier the school would spend £3,087,390 on electric bills over 25 years, but the cut-price electricity deal would incur costs of just £919,083 for the same period. This represents a huge saving, particularly in times of Government austerity with school budgets. Green Energy International managed all phases of the project from start to finish, taking 14 weeks in all. The actual installation took two weeks and was timetabled to minimise disruption to the normal school day. Such was the interest from staff, parents and pupils that the Installers even showed them how panels were fitted and answered plenty of questions. The panels started generating electricity in early April 2016. Mrs Christine Ellis, Wellacre’s business and finance director, said: ‘We will use the panels for education and they will form part of projects around the school. Renewable energy should be an important part of modern life. When we have parents’ evenings we open the blinds and show them off to visitors. The solar panels will allow us to do some fascinating projects, using real data for science and maths from the electricity generated on site. I would recommend Green Energy International to anyone – it was absolutely no trouble to have them on site’.