Markey Group generated 75,797 kiloWatt hours (kWh) of green electricity in September with an annual forecast to generate over 850,000 kWh. Investing £700k in a MegaWatt solar PV system and electrical upgrade Markey Group appointed local Gloucestershire businesses to supply and install the system.
The recently commissioned MegaWatt solar PV system installed on the roof of Markey Group HQ generated over 60% of the company’s electricity requirement in September.
Generating 75,797 kWh of green electricity in September the solar PV system has had a dramatic and immediate reduction in the carbon footprint of the group and its businesses.
“Producing our own clean green electricity has provided us with a huge leap forward in our bid to reduce our impact on the environment” said Paul Markey, Group Managing Director
Consistently the system is providing more electricity than is required by the building, and the machinery used by Markey Group’s on-site kitchen manufacturing business, Premiere Kitchens. As a result, kitchens are now leaving the Premiere factory having been largely constructed using renewable electricity.
“The ability to produce our kitchens using renewable energy helps us on our journey to achieving carbon neutrality in the near future and ultimately Net-Zero.” said Andy Barham, Managing Director of Premiere Kitchens
Annually the system is expected to generate over 850,000 kWh of green electricity, more than the UK average annual usage of 290 homes[1]. Two-thirds of the electricity generated by the system will be used on-site helping the Markey Group avoid over 178 Tonnes of CO2e emissions annually. The remaining third will be sold to Wiltshire-based, Good Energy, a decentralised renewable energy specialist and retailer.
Over the course of a year, the green energy system will provide more than a third of the total electricity requirement of the group, helping to partially shield the business from the recent increases in energy costs, or at least until the end of the Government’s Energy Bill Relief Scheme.
The newly commissioned system comes in a long line of sustainability initiatives employed by the group and its businesses over the last decade, including zero waste to landfill, a biomass boiler and the installation of electric vehicle chargepoints to help the switch to electric vehicles.
Andy Barham went on to say “in the next couple of weeks we will have a new smart air extraction system in the factory with the potential to reduce our daily electricity requirement by a fifth”.
Supporting the Gloucestershire Economy
As well as reducing its impact on the environment, Markey Group sought to appoint Gloucestershire-based businesses for the project, investing £700k in the local economy.
During the summer month, Gloucestershire-based solar PV professionals, Mypower, installed 2,439 solar panels using the solar mounting systems from Cheltenham-based Sunfixings. The onsite electrical upgrade required to integrate the solar PV system into the building was carried out by Gloucester-based JEC Electrical using a bespoke switchgear supplied by Cheltenham-based Sub-Distribution.
