Education
Efficiency upgrade saving £6,462 a year for Sir Tom Finney Community High School.
We installed Voltage Optimisation on site for the local community high school, the low cost installation will save the organisation nearly 6% on their annual energy costs. We installed an Automatic Intelligent Voltage Optimisation Machine for the school – this provides automatic voltage stabilisation and allows seamless bypass to ensure correct voltage at all times. This machine has the ability to allow finer controls of the voltage ensuring time sensitive and optimised management to maximise savings.
Like most education operations, Sir Tom Finney Community High School faced a structural exposure to wholesale electricity prices — a cost line that doubled for many UK businesses between 2021 and 2023 and shows no sign of returning to pre-crisis levels. With significant daytime load and suitable roof space, on-site generation was the obvious lever, but the project needed to stand on its own commercial merits: predictable payback, manufacturer-backed warranties, and zero operational disruption during install.
Following a structural roof survey and DNO capacity check, Alliant Energy specified a Voltage Optimisation array using — high-efficiency mono-PERC panels, paired with a SolarEdge hybrid inverter. The SolarEdge platform was chosen for its export-management capability and remote firmware updates, allowing the array to be tuned over its life without site visits. Surplus generation is exported to the grid under a Smart Export Guarantee tariff, providing a secondary revenue stream alongside the primary saving on imported electricity.
The full installation completed in 1 weeks, scheduled around the customer's operating hours to avoid downtime. Work was carried out by Alliant Energy's directly employed MCS-registered engineers — no subcontracted labour. The system was commissioned to G99 requirements, registered with the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, and handed over with monitoring access, electrical certification, and structural sign-off documents on the day of completion.
In its first full year of operation the system is on track to save Sir Tom Finney Community High School approximately £6,462 on electricity costs, with a payback term of 4.8 Years and a projected total ROI of 521%. Over the 25-year warranted life of the panels, the cumulative saving is forecast at £107,308 — a figure that improves materially if grid prices continue their long-term upward trend, and that benefits from the UK's 100% full-expensing capital allowance for qualifying solar assets.
The installation displaces roughly 3.5 Tonnes of CO₂ emissions every year compared with grid-sourced electricity. Over the system's 25-year design life that is the equivalent of removing more than Sir Tom Finney Community High School's entire annual Scope 2 footprint several times over — a material data point for ESG, B-Corp and net-zero reporting frameworks.
Education businesses typically run daytime electrical loads — refrigeration, machinery, IT, lighting, compressors — that overlap closely with solar generation. That overlap is what drives strong economics: every unit generated and consumed on-site replaces a unit that would otherwise be bought from the grid at full commercial rates. The Sir Tom Finney Community High School project demonstrates how the model scales for this kind of operation.
Alliant Energy installed a Voltage Optimisation solar PV system using — panels paired with a SolarEdge inverter. The installation took 1 weeks from arrival on site to commissioning.
Sir Tom Finney Community High School saves approximately £6,462 per year on electricity, with projected lifetime savings of £107,308 over the system's 25-year guaranteed performance period. The payback term is 4.8 Years, delivering a total ROI of 521%.
This project was paid for directly by the customer. Under the UK's full-expensing capital allowance, the entire cost can be deducted from corporation tax in year one — improving the effective payback meaningfully for profitable companies.
The system avoids around 3.5 Tonnes of CO₂ emissions every year compared with grid-sourced electricity. Over a 25-year design life that's a material contribution toward Scope 2 reduction and any ESG or net-zero reporting commitments the business holds.
Probably — the same hardware platform (panels, hybrid inverter, optional battery) scales from roughly 10kW up to 1MW+. The deciding factors are roof area, daytime electricity use, current unit rate, and grid-connection capacity. Alliant Energy carries out a free desktop feasibility study and follow-up site survey before quoting.
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Accreditations
MCS certification isn't a box-ticking exercise — it qualifies your system for Smart Export Guarantee payments and government grants. Our installers are also NICEIC-approved and TrustMark-registered, and every install is fully insured.
