Solar Panel & Battery Installation, The Thunderbolt Pub, Bristol
What the client wanted
The owner of the Thunderbolt on Bath Road was paying around £450 a month in electricity and was seriously considering selling up. Like a lot of pub owners right now, the energy bills were making an already difficult situation harder. He wanted to understand exactly where the money was going and whether solar could bring those costs down enough to make a difference.
What we did
Before recommending anything, we installed a monitoring system across the pub's circuits and measured what each one was using over a two week period. That gave us a clear picture of exactly where the electricity was going.
Because the pub is a listed building, putting panels on the main roof wasn't an option. Instead, we designed and built a brand new pergola structure in the back garden and installed a SolarEdge system with around 20 panels and battery storage. SolarEdge uses optimiser technology, meaning each panel works independently. If one corner of one panel is in shade, every other panel keeps generating at full capacity. For a garden installation with shading from different angles throughout the day, that makes a difference to overall output.
The pergola also gave the pub something it didn't have before, a proper outdoor dining and seating area.
Outcome
Electricity bills dropped from around £450 a month to around £100. The client went from considering selling to having a business that works better financially. The new pergola structure added usable outdoor space as well as generating the power.
