Solar PV in Eastbourne | 30-Jan-2012
Like many companies in the UK, Pilon Ltd have been carrying out Solar PV installations recently, however as always we have taken an innovative approach to our clients needs.
The project, called Solarbourne, will help council tenants reduce their fuel bills and lower Eastbourne’s carbon footprint, to help the council meet its target of a 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020.
The council is also allowed to sell electricity to the national grid under the Feed In Tariff initiative and so a significant extra income will be generated that can be used by the Council, and recycled back into the community.
Our original contract was with Apollo with Solarbourne being the end client. We were tasked with completing around 1800 2kw systems by the end of March 2012 but as many of you will know the change in the ‘Feed In Tariff’ dramatically affected both the scope of works that we were able to carry out and more importantly the programme of works. We soon arrived at a position where we were required to install as many systems as possible in as short a space of time as possible and in many cases with little or no surveying work done.
The Main Contractor, Apollo worked night and day to produce surveys whilst we did the same installing systems. We in effect had to double our capacity overnight to reach the level of production required and to maximise the benefit Solarbourne could offer to their tenants. We are delighted to say that we were able to achieve this even in the face of substantial material shortages and often inclement weather. We succeeded with this as we had had the foresight to design a bespoke piece of software that added in to our in house ‘Pillar’ operating system. This gave us absolute clarity on stocking levels, labour capacity and capability and shortened the output of documentation dramatically.
We are delighted to have installed over 120 systems in a matter of a few weeks from a standing start. This would not have been achievable without the excellent efforts made by all parties. We look forward to achieving many more results like this and it is a testament to Apollo, Solarbourne and our installation and management teams that such a successful outcome was achieved. Our client commented as follows: “Excellent attitude and performance from all of PiLON’s staff, they work extremely hard and Simon Catchart (PV manager) and his team deserve a lot of praise.” The customer satisfaction speaks for itself as well, approaching the maximum level on all categories 100%.