Wey Valley Solar started in 2011 with six state secondary schools. Now we have 10 schools and one church as part of the Wey Valley Solar community. The original six schools installed in 2011/2102 were:

Rodborough School Milford with a 49 kWp solar PV array. Rodborough is a co-educational secondary school with around 900 pupils. It’s now part of the Weydon Multi Academy Trust. Broadwater School in Farncombe, just outside Milford, with a 47.5 kWp array. Broadwater has over 600 11-16 year olds. Up what must be one of Surrey’s steepest hills (!) Godalming College is a sixth form college and Wey Valley Solar installed an initial 49 kWp there.

Woolmer Hill in Haslemere (11-16 year olds) was slightly smaller at 33.5kWp. Like Rodborough it too is now part of the Weydon Trust. Guildford County School, close to the town centre, has over 1,000 students. The co-op installed an array of 17.5 kWp.  Finally, in the first round, we installed 42 kWp at Beacon School in Banstead.

2015/2016 was the next phase in Wey Valley Solar’s development. The co-op added another 52 kWp a Beacon School taking it to a very respectable 94 kWp in total. Our largest installation to date was at George Abbot School in Guildford. George Abbot is a large secondary with over 1,900 11-18 year-olds. The array was similarly large at 198.5 kWp.

Christ Church Primary School near Hastings (30 kWp) was outside the normal Wey Valley footprint. It was developed with the support of local co-op Energise South, which, at the time, needed our help. The last two schools in this phase were Boxgrove Primary in Merrow with a 43.7 kWp array and Jubilee High School in Addlestone with a 27 kWp Solar PV array.

After the then government’s removal of the Feed-in-Tariff (FIT), further installations were much harder to deliver. But in 2020, the co-op returned to Addlestone and to our first church, St Paul's. St. Paul’s was a small array at 10.4 kWp but was enthusiastically driven through by the church and congregation.

 

New projects

Wey Valley Solar is returning to Godalming College with a 120 kWp array on its Independent Learning Centre. Installation begins in August 2023. Further roofs at Godalming College are in the pipeline. Taken together, the sixth form college will become our highest-generating school.

Our connections with Rodborough and Woolmer Hill have led to discussions during 2022 and 2023 with the Weydon Multi Academy Trust. If all goes to plan, there will be more panels at our existing two schools. We are also aiming to install arrays at the Trust’s five other schools: Weydon, Abbey school, Ridgeway and Heath End in or around Farnham, and Park school in Woking.

You can register, without obligation, for details if the upcoming share issue here