Immersa Ltd
Harnessing Renewable Energy
Eastwood Park
Eastwood Park in South Gloucestershire has had a long and illustrious history as a training facility since WWII. Used over the years by the Home Office, UK Police forces and the NHS, it is now privately owned and continues to provide world-class training.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Eastwood Park Training has a reputation for consistently delivering courses and learning opportunities to the highest possible standards, with renowned experts specialising in multiple fields. Built within the grounds of the existing 19th-century mansion house is a new 3000 m² purpose-built training centre replacing several smaller buildings which were no longer suitable for modern training requirements. The new centre will not only create a great learning environment for those training at Eastwood Park, but it also presents a unique setting for private sector healthcare businesses to partner with the organisation. The centre offers opportunities for research and testing, seminars, a showroom and a medical environment for demonstrations and trials.
CONSULTANCY
The owners appointed Immersa to survey the new training facility to establish its capabilities for renewable energy solutions. Eastwood Park wanted the new building to reflect the Boards vision to provide internationally recognised training and enviable environmental sustainability. As the facility was new, there was no existing energy usage data to analyse for modelling purposes. Our project manager obtained an overview of the predicted day-to-day use of the building, including energy efficiencies incorporated into the construction. Our Q&A also established the electrical equipment fused or training to gain an overall picture of the expected energy use.
SOLUTION
A 144 kW solar array totalling over 500 panels was installed on the roof areas of the new building. We also installed three Solis 50 kW DC inverters. Over 12 months, we will analyse the energy data to establish usage patterns to report back to Eastwood Park on the viability of adding a battery storage system to store any excess output from the solar. Part of our remit was to analyse the mansion house, which is mainly used as an events facility to establish its capability for adding solar to this grade II listed building. However, due to COVID-19, this is currently on hold and should be reviewed in the future. We are in continual dialogue with the owners and their construction contractors, who are excited to press on with additional project elements once the in-facility training restarts. Once sufficient data on energy consumption is available, we will move onto the battery storage phase and introduce solar PV to the mansion house roof.
