Wrexham is not exactly somewhere that you would normally associate with sunshine yet they are about to join cities like Freiburg (Germany), Sacramento (California), and Desert City (Abu Dhabi) as a centre for solar power.
The town in north Wales actually has one of the largest solar panel factories in Europe courtesy of SHARP and in the last month they have installed around 30,000 solar panels on 3,000 council homes. There are also plans to fit six schools and a number of other public buildings with the solar panels to generate another 90kW of solar power.
In an interesting turn of events the council shipped in scaffolding from the surrounding areas to help ensure that they would qualify for the higher pre 4th of March Solar Incentive rate. However this does all hinge on the Government losing their appeal.
Wrexham council have borrowed close to £28 million to help fund the scheme that will eventually generate 5MW of power by equipping one property in every three with solar panels.
The scheme looks to be of particular benefit to council housing tenants as they pay approximately £70 per week for their home and these solar installations are expected to save them around £200-£300 a year on energy bills. The council is also confident that given the electricity they will generate there is a £1m a year profit to be made from the feed-in tariff. This will in turn allow Wrexham to increase their housing budget by almost 10% that is to be re-invested in public housing.
The scheme is expected to help bring an end to fuel poverty in Wrexham and benefit the community as a whole including schools and old people, not to mention a CO2 reduction of about 3,000 tonnes a year.
The investment has allowed Wrexham to jump to top end of the league table for emission reductions and they’re expecting to have reduced 2005’s figures by 70% which could be the largest cuts of anywhere in Britain.
