£35,500
Saved per year
30
CO2 saved per year
Tonnes
159 kWp
System capacity
The Challenge
Mill Hill County High School is a large, partially selective academy on Worcester Crescent in Mill Hill, north London. It’s a state school for boys and girls aged 11 to 18, with 1,691 pupils including 442 sixth formers, and converted to an academy in 2011. It originally opened in 1931 as Orange Hill Boys’ Grammar School, and merged with Moat Mount School in 1984 to create Mill Hill County High School.
A school of that size runs classrooms, IT suites, science labs and sports facilities through the school day, and every pound spent on electricity is a pound that isn’t spent on pupils. The school wanted to cut its energy costs and carbon footprint, using roof space it already had.
The Solution
Eden Sustainable designed and installed a 159 kWp rooftop solar PV system at the school, made up of 314 high-efficiency JA Solar 505W panels feeding Solis inverters. The school funded the project itself as a capital investment, so it owns the system outright and keeps every pound of saving it produces.
Solar suits schools well, because generation peaks in the middle of the day, when classrooms are full and demand is highest. Eden worked the design through several iterations to arrive at the right size for the school’s roofs and energy use, and managed the full project from design and the grid connection with UK Power Networks to installation and commissioning, with the work planned around a busy school.
The Outcome
The system now saves Mill Hill County High School around £35,500 a year on electricity and avoids 30 tonnes of CO₂ annually. That’s money that can go back into teaching and facilities, year after year.
It also gives pupils something they can see every day on their own school roof: renewable energy working in practice, not just in a textbook.