Premier Inn has today announced it is to almost double its portfolio of rooftop solar arrays with the addition of a further 70 projects in the coming months. The hotel chain’s parent company Whitbread confirmed it has set its sights on developing the largest solar portfolio of any UK hotel chain, after signing a deal with renewables developer Anesco to take its solar rooftop installations from 88 currently to 158. The new installations will have a combined capacity of over 1.6MW, the company said, taking its total capacity to over 3MW – equivalent to the energy needed to power around 2.9million washing machine cycles. Whitbread said that once the project is completed solar panels will be fitted on over 20 per cent of Premier Inn hotels. The economics of solar installations are being further strengthened by falling energy storage costs and the latest contract for Anesco comes just days after it published projections suggesting it is on track to more than quadruple its operational battery portfolio by 2020, after its order book swelled to 380MW of storage capacity. The company opened the UK’s first utility scale energy storage unit in September 2014 and now has 29 operational sites with a number of other projects under development, including a giant 50MW installation in Hampshire that is due for completion later this year. The hope is that energy storage will play a key role in making unsubsidised solar projects a reality and advocates of the approach are increasingly confident the economics are starting to stack up.
Business Green 21st May 2018 read more »
Solar Power Portal 21st May 2018 read more »
E.On and Google are to bring their Sunroof platform to British households in the coming weeks as the companies hope to replicate the success of the solar modelling tool in Germany, where it has been used by more than 10,000 customers.
Solar Power Portal 21st May 2018 read more »