Thames Water has just announced that they have had all their industrial scale solar energy projects signed off by Ofgem. And it’s just in the nick of time, so they can take advantage of the Government’s higher feed-in tariff.
The Thames Water solar scheme has seen photovoltaic arrays installed on some of the firm’s unusable sites including the roof of the Beckton desalination plant, the Crossness sewage works storm tanks and on the redundant sand filters at the Walton Water treatment works.
By getting the works signed off in time, Thames Water will benefit from the higher 30.7p per kW/h feed-in rate, which should see them reduce their electricity bills by £100,000 per year and hence be able to pass on the savings to their customers.
Thames Water’s head of carbon and energy management, John Gilbert, said:
“We delivered this project in the nick of time, keeping alive our goal to become Britain’s biggest on-site producer and industrial user of solar power, and further hedging ourselves from future upward fluctuations in the mainstream, non-renewable energy markets. This means we will reduce the amount we spend on energy each year.”