Viridor has announced that the Lakeside Energy from Waste facility in Berkshire has won the ‘Commercial Rooftop Installation’ Award at the Solar UK Industry Awards 2014.
Lakeside Energy from Waste is a joint venture between Grundon Waste Management and Viridor. Situated close to Heathrow Terminal 5, the facility transforms 410,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste each year into 37 megawatts of electricity. In response to Lakeside reviewing the energy needs of its business, BELECTRIC UK was appointed in November 2013 to construct a solar PV rooftop system to generate energy on-site with the express purpose of powering this flagship facility.
Through a strong working partnership with the Lakeside EFW team, BELECTRIC UK installed 1,000 solar panels on one third of the south-facing curved roof of the plant. Each year the system generates 230,500 kWh of sustainable energy, and delivers a saving of 137,000 tonnes of carbon.
“Although the Lakeside Facility has been running for four years now, we are continuously trying to maximise operating efficiency – particularly the amount of energy we use. We were surprised to learn that even in the UK, which is not known for brilliant weather, solar energy technology performs really well, and now generates the energy we need to run the plant operations. This was not a straightforward job because the curvature of the roof meant that very close attention had to be paid to health and safety. The BELECTRIC UK team worked very closely with us in this challenging environment and did an excellent job” said Danny Coulston, director of operations, Lakeside Energy from Waste.
Toddington Harper, BELECTRIC UK CEO said, “We are delighted to have won this award for such an iconic building. The team worked extremely hard to ensure install this world class 250 kilowatt peak solar power system onto such a unique, tall building, without any disruption or downtime to the power production on site”.
The purpose of the Solar UK Industry Awards is to recognise best practice, success stories and developments along the entire value chain of the solar industry – from laboratory based technology developments to efficient system installation. The Awards focus on the people, processes and products that drive the solar industry forward.
The installation was also Highly Commended in the most-entered category – Commercial Rooftop Installation – at the Solar Power Portal Awards in Birmingham in October 2014.
