The Palestra Photovoltaic
Project has demonstrated how we can work with multiple organisations to deliver
a flagship renewable energy project as a retrofit on one of London’s most iconic
buildings during a running building programme. From securing planning permission
through the London Borough of Southwark, the
London Climate Change
Agency worked with the building's developer
Blackfriars Investments, the architects Alsop, building engineers Skanska and
principle photovoltaic system designers and installers Solar Technologies to
deliver this project.
Financial support has been
provided by the London Climate Change Agency and by the DTI (now Department for Business
Enterprise & Regulatory Reform) Photovoltaic Demonstration Programme administered
by the Energy Saving Trust. The system started generating energy in October
2006.
Technical Summary - The system comprises 335 high
efficiency Sanyo mono-crystalline photovoltaic modules with peak capacity 63kW
and is expected to generate over 48,000kWh of electricity each year, sufficient
to supply about 3% of the LDA's electricity consumption (or all of the
electricity required by the LDA's IT systems) saving 25,000kg of CO2
a year as well.
