How investing in solar infrastructure is making a difference

The ongoing energy crisis would have seen the bills for FP Advanced Coatings Ltd sky rocket from £39k to 215k – that’s a whopping 450% increase! 

Whilst we know that every business is facing the same challenges at the moment, this increase would have had catastrophic implications for the business and for our customers who, as you would expect, would have seen significant price increases as a result. 

Thankfully, we’ve been on a journey which has seen our bills fall to just 2.7p per kilowatt of energy that we use. As you can imagine, this is fantastic news for us as a business and for our customers that are already facing crippling price increases at every corner of the business. 

How have we managed to do this? Well, it’s all thanks to our roof and the power of sunlight. 

How can a roof save you money on your energy bills

The government has a clear target to increase solar capacity fivefold to 70GW by 2035 as part of wider plans to power up Britain with cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy sources.

At the May 2023 meeting of the newly appointed Solar Taskforce it was highlighted that commercial buildings, including offices, retail spaces, warehouses and even car parks offer vast areas of unused rooftop space that could be utilised for solar panel installation. This untapped potential could play a crucial role in meeting the UK’s ambitious renewable energy targets while driving the transition towards a sustainable and low-carbon future.

For us, we saw the potential back in 2020. We knew that we wanted to add solar panels to the roof as a way of giving us a long-term stable energy supply. Already we’d seen steadily growing energy bills and we knew there was a potential crisis on the horizon. Little did we know the extent to this though and the year that we finished the project we’d be looking at such extreme increases. 

Sadly as a business there were no grants available so the cost was seen as a long term investment in the business. What we didn’t expect however was the additional cables and a constraint system that stops energy going into the grid when it’s not needed then had to be installed which did come in at an additional cost to the business. 

The project took 2.5 years to complete and 9 months to fully install the photovoltaic array panels but we can proudly say that we now have 1790 of them spanning the entire roof. 

What is the impact of having photovoltaic array panels on a roof

The photovoltaic array panels now provide 33% and on a cloudy day 20% of the 3.4 gigawatt of energy that we need to ensure that all elements of the factory including shot blasting, electro painting and power coating are kept going almost 24 hours a day. Whilst it’s going to take us 4 or 5 years to pay for the investment, it was worth it. As a business we now have stability in the marketplace for years to come which in turn offers peace of mind for employees, the business park where we are based and to our customers. FP Coatings Ltd is most definitely here to stay.