Egni Coop have completed their first install on a school in the Heads of the Valleys. 60KW of solar power have been installed at Brynmawr Foundation School in Blaenau Gwent, one of the biggest rooftop installs in the county.

Gerard McNamara, School Headteacher said “Brynmawr takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously. Pupils are very passionate to reduce the school’s environmental impact.  We are delighted that the school has been able to reduce its carbon footprint and work in partnership with a Welsh Coop to install solar energy to reduce our environmental impact. We understand that the solar panels will generate over 50,000kWh per year – and this will have a carbon saving of 18 tonnes of CO2.

We are also very interested to analyse the generation data on the solar web portal in our lessons, and assess how different weather affects the amount of energy that the solar panels produce.

The school will also receive £500 of free shares in the Coop earning the school an income stream and we can use this in our work on entrepreneurship education with the pupils. It’s a great opportunity to understand how the coop business model works and for pupils to attend Egni’s AGM and other events if they wish, participating in the coop’s governance.  The school will also benefit from a below market cost for every unit of energy used from the renewable energy rather than non-renewable sources.”

Egni Director, Rosie Gillam commented “We’d like to thank the pupils for their enthusiasm throughout the project and to the staff for facilitating the install. It’s also been a huge effort ahead of the planned installation date by our installers Ice Power, in quite appalling weather conditions over the past week or so during Storms Ciara and Dennis, to complete the work over the half term break.

“We are developing a range of educational materials and look forward to coming back to Brynmawr Foundation School to undertake some lessons with the pupils, to explain how the technology works and inspire some future solar engineers hopefully!”

Dan McCallum, Egni Director, added “All these projects are a demonstrations of how Wales can meet its climate change targets and the Future Generations Act which is an inspiring piece of legislation. We’ve been amazed by the level of support for our Share Offer which now reached a staggering £1.47m, near our £1.5m target. You can join us here www.egni.coop”