Member Article

Gentoo reach 2000th PV Milestone

Gentoo Group has reached an important milestone in its mission to alleviate fuel poverty amongst its customers by installing solar photovoltaic (PV) panels to 2,000 of their homes.

The milestone comes as part of Gentoo’s ongoing PV retrofitting programme, where its customers pay a £1 maintenance charge per week to benefit from financial savings on their household energy bill.

Over £8 million has already been invested into the project to date and the average saving on fuel bills so far is 22%.

Washington couple and Gentoo customers Victor and Joyce Cowie were delighted to be the 2,000th household to take up the offer to reduce their energy bills. Victor said: “We are delighted with the work that has been done to our home. We know people who’ve had PV panels fitted so sought lots of advice beforehand and they came well-recommended. The potential cost savings were a big enough incentive for us to take up the offer and paying £1 per week is next to nothing considering the amount of money we should save on our energy bill.”

Gentoo uses its in-house Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) accredited team to install PV to its homes, which it sources from UK PV manufacturer ‘Romag’. Coupled with Gentoo’s in-house capacity, the reduction in cost of PV from its North East-based supplier over the course of the last 2 years has also been a key factor in ensuring Gentoo’s PV programme has remained cost neutral.

Allan Thompson, Managing Director of Gentoo Construction, said: “This is the second phase of our PV retrofit programme and as the number of installations we have made to date show; the programme has proven very popular amongst our customers. Gentoo’s mission is to reinvest the wealth it generates back into the communities it serves and we will do the same with this project. The income that Gentoo will receive through the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) as a result of PV installations made to date will be ring fenced to install more PV systems to more of its customers’ homes.”

Some 20,000 PV panels have now been fitted to Gentoo properties and as well helping its customers to reduce their energy bills, retrofitting PV to its properties has also allowed it to reduce its environmental impact as a business by reducing the carbon emissions of its existing housing stock.

As well as retrofitting PV to existing homes Gentoo is incorporating built-in PV (BIPV) into its own new build programme and offering this service to external clients. These are supplied by North East manufacturer Romag, a subsidiary of the Gentoo Group, who recently won a multi-million pound contract to provide glass for Hitachi Rail Europe’s Class 800/801 high speed trains for the Intercity Express Programme.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Laura Facey .