Case Study:
Edmo Limited

Commercial grant provides £40,000 towards
Solar PV

Edmo Limited was established over 40 years ago. They provide a huge variety of customers and markets with product supply solutions using aluminium extrusion and a wide variety of other components, finishing and assembly capabilities.

Edmo’s Ross-on-Wye facility is a manufacturing site and, like many in the engineering sector, they require a lot of electricity to power their machinery in addition to running everyday items such as lighting and computers. Their six-day operation requires in excess of 200,000 units of electricity per annum at an annual cost of £28,000.

Continuously looking to reduce their environmental impact, Edmo have undertaken numerous carbon saving strategies. These include installing low energy compressors, energy efficient powder coating ovens, LED lighting upgrades and, now, Solar PV.

50% grant funding

MarRE (Marches Renewable Energy) is a renewable energy grant available to SMEs located in the Marches areas of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin. The MarRE grant is straightforward and offers eligible applicants 50% towards the cost of installing renewable technologies, including solar PV.

Through their other energy-reducing investments, Edmo were already aware of the European funding available through MarRE. They made a successful application and the grant provided £40,000 of funding towards the installation of solar PV.

Key facts and predictions

The benefits from solar PV were impressive without a grant but even more so with one:

130.98kWp (403 panels) installed by Mypower
85,445 kWh units of energy produced per annum
First year income & savings = £10,352 (£14,886 with grant)
First year ROI = 12.7% (25.4% with grant)
25 year income & savings after indexation = 291,919
Equivalent purchase price of electricity over 25 years including Operating & Maintenance costs = 4.32 p/kWh (2.87 p/kWh with grant)
CO2 emissions avoided per annum = 27.8 tonnes
Payback before finance, tax and capital allowance benefits = 7.9 years (3.9 years with grant)
Solar PV electricity savings compared to grid supplied electricity at 15.7p/kWh = 69% (79% with grant)

Edmo - Mypower Solar PV

Reducing environmental impact

Their solar PV will provide Edmo with 121,000 kWh of clean, renewable electricity, helping them to avoid over 28 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. In addition to the environmental savings, of course, any investment must make commercial sense. Edmo will see savings in excess of £570,000 over the next 25 years.

1/3 of annual electricity needs delivered by solar

Commercial solar provides the highest financial returns when a business consumes the majority of generation on-site. Any unused electricity can be sold to the grid at around 5p per unit. Sometimes the local grid infrastructure imposes an export limit which can restrict the amount of electricity exported after on-site consumption. This was the case at Edmo, which had tight restrictions on what they could export. So, a load limiter was installed to 'turn the power down' on a Sunday (when they are not operating), ensuring that they did not overload the grid. While this meant a slight loss of the 5p per unit export revenue for Edmo, the overall commercial returns still look great, with just over 1/3 of their annual electricity needs being met with their own low cost renewable energy - right from their rooftop!

Proactive and flexible

"With the help of Mypower, and having previous experience of grant applications, we were able to secure funding without much difficulty that equated to half of the capital cost of the installation. Mypower proved themselves to be proactive and flexible in meeting our requirements and also helped with the subsequent arrangements for the export of surplus electricity generated by our PV"

Paul Rhodes, Finance Director - Edmo Limited