As a club, one of our ongoing development plans has been to become Greener, more energy efficient and whilst also reducing our ever-increasing overheads. Last year, we changed our electric heaters for more efficient oil heaters, whilst also doubling the insulation throughout the roof space.

This year, with the help of an ECB Grant, we have just been given the go ahead to install 24 solar panels onto the roof of the pavilion, and an expandable battery system, which should lower our overall running costs during the Summer, whilst also giving us the opportunity to “sell back” to the grid, during the months that the clubhouse is not being utilised out of season.

This idea has been in the bubbling away for a little while now, so I'm delighted that we've been able to get the ECB funding and our own bank balance to align at the same time, in order to get the project kicked off.

Scaffolding will be going up on the 11th August and the full installation should only take a week, so disturbances will be minimal.

The based on our current usage, the estimated time to payback the capital expenditure (without the grant included) is less than 2 years, so it should be a real asset to the club moving forward.

James Penfold