Solar PV Covering Half a Newport Nursery's Power

Wibli Wobli is a day nursery in Duffryn on the western edge of Newport, looking after children from babies through to pre-school age. The setting runs long hours across the week, with heating, lighting, kitchen equipment and the usual demands of a building full of young children all drawing power through the day.

That daytime pattern is what made the site a strong fit for solar. A nursery uses most of its electricity in the hours when the sun is up, so power generated on the roof can be used straight away in the building rather than sent back to the grid.

We designed a 35.7 kWp system using 70 AIKO 510 W panels, sized to match the way the nursery actually uses power rather than to fill every inch of roof. The panels feed a single SolarEdge 25 kW inverter with optimisers fitted across the array, so each panel works independently and shading or a single underperforming module doesn't drag down the rest.

The roof faces close to due south at a shallow pitch, which suits a Newport site well and keeps output steady through the working day. Across a year the system is expected to generate around 35,170 kWh against the building's use of roughly 40,000 kWh.

Because the nursery is open and busy through daylight hours, 53% of that generation is used on site as it is produced, covering 62% of the annual electricity bill. That works out at around £477 a month off the building's running costs in the first year.

Over the 25-year life of the system the modelled saving comes to £127,840, with the panels cutting roughly 6.8 tonnes of carbon a year. On those figures the system pays for itself in around six years.