Salford City Council completes £7.45m efficiency upgrade scheme
Salford City Council has completed a £7.45 million government-funded scheme after installing more than 2,500 solar panels on public buildings across the city, with a generation capacity of nearly 2.5million kWh.
Since 2020, the scheme has delivered a range of measures, including the 2,562 solar panels on 21 public buildings, plus introducing air source heat pump systems to replace previous heating systems on 12 sites, and installing battery energy storage systems at four sites. The batteries will store excess energy from the solar panels and charge electricity from the grid during cheaper off-peak periods at night, to then redistribute this during the day, cutting energy bills.
Other measures in the programme include installing a variety of energy-saving tools to the public estate such as LED lighting, insulation, radiator valves, double glazing and metering.
“Salford City Council is delivering innovative solutions to make our public estate more sustainable as we work towards our goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2038,” said Councillor Mike McCusker, lead member for planning, transport and sustainable development.
“This scheme will significantly reduce the carbon footprint of a number of key buildings across the estate, including our leisure and sports facilities and children’s homes, which will now be sustainably heated and better equipped to help us build a greener Salford in the coming years.
“However, we know we must do more to address the climate emergency and in addition to our £126 million of investment in our green spaces and walking and cycling routes across the city, our state-of-the-art solar farm will help us turbocharge our ability to generate clean energy in our city.”
The scheme was made possible after £78 million was secured by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and 15 other partners from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme. The funding was provided to Greater Manchester to support energy efficiency upgrades to 200 buildings across the city region with Salford receiving £7.4 million.
Of the 30 public buildings upgraded through the programme, Salford Sports Village in Kersal received the most new measures and is expected to save 46 tonnes of carbon per year. The measures included in this project include:
- A new air source heat pump system to replace the previous gas boiler system
- 130 solar panels installed to generate 40,600 kWh annually in energy
- A new building energy management system which will monitor and control the building’s energy
- Both internal and external heating pipework insulation to ensure that maximum heat energy is distributed to the radiators.
- Installation of LED lighting within the building and the car park
- A battery energy storage system to store excess generated solar energy and cheaper off-peak, grid-supplied electricity and then use this to power the building during the day when tariffs are more expensive
