PV System for St Edward's School

SEI's engineers have today commissioned the PV system installed on St Edward's School's new science block.

This grant-supported project will offset a significant amount of the electricity consumed by the building's IT facilities.

SEI were called in relatively late in the construction of the new block after the school decided that they wanted some on-site generation. A project engineer from SEI's met with the construction team on site, and it was decided that a PV system would be the most technically appropriate technology to achieve their requirements.

However, as the building was already underway, a typical rooftop installation wasn't possible as there was no access to the roof. Several alternatives were considered, including creating a shelter over the sprinkler storage tank and using another school building in an offset fashion. In the end, the most appropriate was found to be mounting on the southern wall, which, as the rear face of the building was realtively uncluttered and exposed to the Sun.

As there is no off-the-shelf product for fixing (retro-fitting) a PV facade to a brick wall, SEI's engineers had to find a new solution. In order to be acceptible, the facade system would have to provide a secure mounting for modules throughout the system's life, including allowing for easy inspection of modules without compromising surrounding units. The final design involved the use of a Euroclad rainscreen facade tracked-bolt system as well as some bespoke components. As well as fulfilling the requirements, in our opinon it also looks quite neat!

The installation itself was performed with a team of locally sourced labour working with specialists, and the whole system was installed during the school's mid-term break.

SEI is now working with Euroclad to develop the system further, which means that for future projects, it will be relatively simple to integrate PV into a client's existing aluminium facade.

For more images and technical details on the project, click here for SEI's project summary.