Orchard Fields Community School

Orchard Fields Community School in Banbury became a Low Carbon hub solar school, with 399 solar pv panels installed on their rooftop – owned and managed by Low Carbon Hub.

Situated in Bretch Hill estate and with over 350 pupils, Orchard Fields is at the heart of a large community and prides itself on engaging with the local area. The school were already doing great work on sustainability, registering as an Eco School in 2008, and achieving the Silver award just two years later. The installation of a solar rooftop array allowed them to take this to the next level, generating their own clean electricity to power the school.

The Low Carbon Hub team had a great time visiting Orchard Fields to launch the panels. We took photos of the panels with the help of the eco team and ran a solar quiz for the whole school.

Orchard Fields was the first Low Carbon Hub project to be fitted with export limiter technology, due to capacity constraints on the local grid. The limiter enabled us to install 100kWp of panels rather than just 50kWp. This means that the school can enjoy more generation without worrying about overheating the local substation cables during periods of lower energy use and higher exporting.

We are extremely grateful to the site manager and business manager for their patience as this more complex installation has required more visits to test and optimise.

399
solar panels
100
kW installed capacity
85,079
annual generation (kWh)
39%
school's electricity needs met
£35k
savings to school bills over lifetime
15.33
tonnes of CO₂ emissions saved every year

As a school we feel incredibly proud to be doing our utmost to reduce our Carbon Footprint. It is incredible to consider we are the largest Solar Roof Project on a Primary School in Oxfordshire with our school roof hosting 384 solar panels. It has been an invaluable exercise in educating our pupils for the future on the importance for us all to explore the possibility of using renewable resources for our energy. This project has excited all of our pupils, in particular our Eco Council as they have been involved in saving energy within our school for several years and are celebrating the huge impact the panels will have on the school’s vision for being an Eco Friendly School for many years to come. I would recommend other schools to become involved in this important initiative in order to protect our amazing planet for future generations.

DAWN SHILSTON, HEADTEACHER

Could your school be a solar school?

If you work in a school in Oxfordshire, and you’re interested in finding out more about how your school could work with us to install a solar array, please contact our Projects Manager.