Heating system upgrade & battery for solar PV

I am delighted to tell you that in July, Fownhope New Memorial Hall has been the lucky recipient of a grant of nearly £20k from the National Lottery. This is for work that will improve our energy efficiency and also provide better comfort for those who use the Hall.

We have very grateful to the National Lottery, who have generously supported so much of our work in making improvements to your Hall over the last twelve years. This has included our external store room, the bar, kitchen, the variable ceiling (two grants), double glazed windows and car-park lighting.

About half the recent grant has gone towards the installation of the four new fan convectors in the main Lechmere Hall. These heaters are the modern equivalent of the original ones, installed when the Hall was built in 1987 and that we have been using ever since. They should be much quieter, more efficient and controllable than the original ones.

Although the heating system is still turned on and off with the simple mechanical timer, as previously, users can now control the temperature in the hall using a digital thermostat. This operates differently to a normal thermostat so, if you need to change the set temperature, please read carefully the instructions we have placed next to it. The control works by changing the heater fan speed continuously up and down, rather than by switching the fans on and off, in order to achieve the required temperature.

The new fan convectors have been installed by the contractors C J Bayliss (Hereford) Ltd, who did a superb job. The work was completed to a very high standard, bang on time.

The rest of the grant will go towards installing a battery system to store the excess energy generated by our solar PV system during the day. We can then use this energy for events in the evening, instead of taking it from the grid, which will reduce our energy costs.

The system is completely automatic and should even provide power in the event of a power cut. The battery will be installed in the entrance lobby near to the switchboard, and will not in any way obstruct
access through the main door. We have asked Solar Kinetics Ltd to carry out the installation but, at the time of writing, there are still some minor technical issues to sort out before this can start.