Charnwood Guest House, Shrewsbury

A successful Shrewsbury bed and breakfast establishment has taken decisive action against its ever rising energy bills. Owners of the long established Shrewsbury business, Peter and Jo Henshaw decided to recently install an 8 Kw SANYO solar photovoltaic system after becoming increasingly concerned at the amount of money it was costing to subsidise their electricity bills.

Jo Henshaw explained, "We have always offered our residents quality affordable accommodation and value for money, but in order to be able to maintain this level of service and still make a profit we had to look at our overheads.

"By investing in solar PV and receiving payments from the government 'feed in tariff scheme' we have completely wiped out our electricity bill and taken a huge chunk off our other utility bills."

The Henshaw's system is predicted to generate over 6,667 kilowatt hours per annum and with it a whopping tax free income annually of over £3,200 pounds.

"We did not install the systems just for monetary gain, we needed to protect ourselves against spiralling electricity costs as we use much more than the average household given the nature of our business.

"We chose Salop Energy Commercial to undertake the project for a number of reasons; they have a solid reputation for delivering quality solar installations and being able to provide expert roofing skills 'in house' was critical as far as this project was concerned.

"The existing roof tiles were badly shailed and needed replacing, as they would not have outlasted the lifespan of the solar modules which is for well over 25 years.

"Some essential structural strengthening work needed to be carried out to the main roof purlins. This was due to the increased additional load the solar modules would bring to the south elevation.

"Salop Energy Commercial undertook all the works and no sub-contractors were used, which we thought was very impressive, we are extremely happy that with the installation."