Riverside Vineyard Fellowship

The Client

Riverside Vineyard Centre (RVC) in Feltham, Middlesex is a Christian church, a fellowship of people from diverse backgrounds, and part of a growing movement of churches across 6 continents. Riverside Vineyard Conferencing Centre is also based on site and has 4 versatile meeting rooms of varying sizes. The largest break-out or meeting room can accommodate up to 150 conference delegates in a theatre-style layout.

The church and conferencing centre consume 97,890 kWh of electricity annually, and RVC is committed to developing ways to reduce its environmental footprint and reduce impacts of climate change. In 2021, it established a Green Team to research and develop more sustainable ways to operate.

SaveMoneyCutCarbon was contacted by Green Team leader Andrew Gill, who had worked with the company in another capacity. The team advised SaveMoneyCutCarbon that it was committed to reducing its climate impact, with an aim for self-sufficiency as far as possible, and to reducing energy costs.

The church organisers and trustees explored potential solutions for energy savings and carbon reductions with SaveMoneyCutCarbon through extensive discussions and planning meetings.

A crucial phase of the development process was the need to secure funding and the SaveMoneyCutCarbon team worked closely with the church to help support the funding application for a £40k Community Energy Fund grant from Hounslow council.

Following a competitive tender process, the Riverside Vineyard invested over £110,000 in a rooftop solar panel installation.

SaveMoneyCutCarbon first carried out a desktop feasibility analysis, followed by detailed site surveys, before fully managing the installation of 167 panels on a roof-mounted system. The installation is optimised for greatest yield and maximum generation together with full monitoring, as opposed to a standard string system.

The system is designed to maximise self-consumption of energy generated and so significantly reduce energy bills, with the facility to export electricity at advantageous rates to the National Grid through the local energy supplier. During high summer, the solar array will provide 100% of the energy needs of the church building.

All installed products and services are Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) approved. The monocrystalline photovoltaic modules offer the highest efficiency cells and lower degradation rates, constructed from a single piece of silicon, making it easier for electricity to flow through. They have a pyramid cell pattern which offers a larger surface area, enabling the panels to collect a greater amount of energy from the sun’s rays.

The system also benefits from Solar Edge inverters with optimisers behind each panel. All inverters are ready to be connected to batteries in the future in order to maximise export and self-consumption as needed during the night.

Over the next 25 years, it’s estimated that the Riverside Vineyard will make £699,913 in cost savings with CO2 reductions of 328,000 Kg, the equivalent of 814,165 miles in a petrol-fuel car.
(Based on utility rate of 15.7p).

Optimisers give a minimum of a yield increase of on average 10%, provide added safety features, panel level monitoring showing generation data assisting maintenance and an extra two years on the inverter warranty. The optimisers allow the panels to perform independently so the strings are not brought down to the lowest performing panel as in a standard string inverter set up.

The system is classed as a Safe DC system, which minimises the risk of electrocution from high DC voltage. It ensures DC voltage is reduced to touch-safe levels (1 volt per optimiser) when the inverter is shut down, enabling safe maintenance and emergency intervention. In contrast, a standard string inverter set up cannot shut down the solar panel array so will typically have live cabling up to 750V at any point during daylight.

• Trina Solar 425W panels
• S440a Optimisers
• P850 Optimisers
• Renusol Metasole+ mounting system

• SolarEdge Manager 50k full unit inverter
• SolarEdge SE25K Full unit inverter
• SolarEdge SE12.5K inverter
• Metering and monitoring packs