Solar Appreciation Day

12 March 2021

For this year's Solar Appreciation Day (12 March 2021), we thought we would have a closer look at solar energy in Swale.

At the end of 2018 there were 1,628 installation sites producing renewable electricity in Swale, and 99.3% of these were photovoltaic. The majority of these were domestic roof top installations. In addition, there are seven solar PV sites, four onshore wind installations, one site generating renewable energy form sewerage gas or land fill gas and one site generating energy from biomass. Swale also has two domestic wind installations.

These sites plus offshore wind provide a total capacity of 750.4MW of electricity – generating nearly 2,500 GWh. 89% of this comes from offshore wind, and the rest comes from solar photovoltaics (3%), onshore wind (2%), sewerage gas (<1%), landfill gas (<1%) and plant biomass (6%).

As a business, you can help Swale work towards Net Zero 2030 by installing solar panels at your business. The payback time for solar panels is often 6-7 years - as sunlight is free, this provides the potential to considerably lower electricity costs.

There are grants available to help with the costs of installation:

• LoCASE - Low Carbon Across the South East – for standard SMEs in the region who are looking at ‘green’ projects or LCEGS firms seeking grant funding for business development purposes, especially pertinent through COVID-19 adaptation. Maximum 40% ERDF grant contributions will remain at a limit of £10K with the minimum grant of £1K for qualifying projects.
• Non-domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) - GOV.UK -  helps businesses, public sector and non-profit organisations meet the cost of installing renewable heat technologies.
• From January 2020, the smart export guarantee (SEG) is an obligation set by the government for licensed electricity suppliers to offer a tariff and make payment to small-scale low-carbon generators for electricity exported to the National Grid, such as through solar PV installations.

If you are a business that has already taken installed solar, we would love to hear from you! Please email the Climate and Ecological Emergency Project Officer.