Kentish Town CoE Primary School

About

Kentish Town Church of England Primary School is a voluntary-aided school with the capacity for 236 pupils aged 3 to 11 years located in Islip Street, just south of the rail/tube station. The school buildings are a mix of 1900s, 1960/70s & 2010s architecture.

Funding & delivery

Initially PUNL had proposed a community funded project but the school preferred to use their own resources supplemented by a grant from the London Borough of Camden. PUNL assisted the school’s architect in obtaining planning permission, obtained quotations from PV suppliers, instructed a Structural Engineer to check the suitability of the various roofs (during this phase the number of panels reduced from 196 in the planning application to the 85 actually installed). DNO approval was obtained and the school’s current electricity usage monitored. PUNL assisted the school in applying for the LBC grant and once funded obtained final quotations & recommended the supplier (R.Eco). Installation took place during the school summer holiday in 2020.

Benefits & impact

The solar installation is expected to deliver over 30 MWh/y achieving a carbon saving of 7.2 tonnes and with over 80% being used by the school the first year cost saving is £3.3K

Project deliverables

Planning permission: Permission was obtained in April 2018

DNO: June 2020

Structural survey: Two companies were involved, the engineers for the 2010 extension and a freelance structural engineer for the other roofs. The original roof was able to take the planned loads, however both the 1960/70s and 2010s roofs had limited capacity which reduced the size of the project.

On-site demand: During term (and pre-Covid) demand was c. 40kW/h in the week & 7 kW/h at weekends

Display: A display giving information of generation, carbon saved, etc, is to be installed

Installation: The project was installed and commissioned in August 2020. At the time of writing, in September, final works (documentation, display) are ongoing.