Leamington Spa Hospital now has solar power!

Following its successful installation of solar panel arrays at Warwick and Stratford Hospitals, Community Energy Warwickshire launched a new community share offer at the end of March 2014 to raise funds to install a solar panel array at a third hospital owned and operated by South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust: the Leamington Spa Hospital at Whitnash, near Leamington Spa.

Suitable roofs capable of carrying around 50 kWp of solar panels were identified at the hospital, and invitations to tender were issued in November 2013 to selected local solar panel installers. As a result, Stratford upon Avon firm Stratford Energy Solutions has been chosen to install high efficiency SunPower panels at the hospital.

Detailed discussionswere held with the Trust to sort out legal arrangements, and a community share offer to fund the scheme was launched at the end of March 2014. As a result of a very positive response by investors, Community Energy Warwickshire was able to install the solar panel array at the Hospital ahead of schedule, and the panels started generating on 10 June 2014 – and by the end of December 2015, over 80,000 units had been generated.