10 . 01 . 16
The roof of our workshop has been a bit noisier than usual this past week. That’s because when it wasn’t drilling down with rain, we could hear the muffled sounds of reggae coming from a radio and the careful footsteps of a team of guys who have been installing a rack of solar panels on our roof in between the rain showers.
Much of the electricity that we use here at Otter is already generated on site by a wind turbine and an existing rack of PV panels near the campsite, so these additional solar panels will further reduce Mount Pleasant Ecological Park’s reliance upon electricity from the national grid and in-turn make our operation even more sustainable.
We now have sixteen photovoltaic panels installed on our roof, facing southeast above the big blue doors. These panels have the capacity to produce up to 4 kilowatts (kW), which should produce 3,400 kW hours in an average year (although output depends upon the amount of daylight hours so will fluctuate with the seasons). The Energy Saving Trust estimates that the average three-bedroom home in the UK uses a little over 3,000 kWh each year; to quantify that, the panels on our roof could potentially boil a kettle for 1,880 hours each year, which adds up to over 5 hours every day. We drink a fair bit of tea here, but certainly not that much so there should be plenty of power left over for the various machines that we use to process timber in preparation for making our surfboards.
The solar panels on our roof (which will help to provide power for all of the businesses here at Mount Pleasant Ecological Park) were installed by Natural Generation who are based a few miles up the coast from us in Perranporth.
Here's Jonathan to tell you what it was like joining us in our workshop to make a wooden surfboard...
Laurie made a 9'1 Wicket with us last year, and we recently reached out to him for his reflections on the workshop experience and how the board is...
