This week ICRTouch had solar panels installed at their HQ at Sandown on the sunny Isle of Wight. The move to renewable energy allows ICRTouch to generate its own electricity and drastically reduce its expenses.
ICRTouch will be making a substantial effort to go green this year with the help from Green Impact. Throughout the year ICRTouch will be making some small changes as well as some larger ones. Moving to solar is one of the larger goals that we wanted to achieve.
Why go solar?
CTO James Johnson says, “ICRTouch is committed to minimising its footprint and this was our next phase in our sustainable energy strategy. The move to solar gives us energy security. In the rural Sandown area we were experiencing numerous power cuts, which is very costly to us because we are running important services to our customers worldwide. Reliability for our end users is paramount. Before we had backup energy in the form of numerous generators, as well as remote service back ups, so going solar gives us and our users further security from these power cut failures.
The decision was ultimately a double whammy, it is morally right as a big chunk of our carbon footprint is offset, and it was also a smart business decision. As a successful company that is investing in its future, we feel it is our responsibility to lead from the front and implement renewable energy solutions in the hope that more businesses will follow suit.
We now have the maximum solar generation permitted on our building and we also have plans to optimise even further with stored battery energy from independent solar generation.
…And also our electricity bill was costing us a fortune!“
The ICRTouch solar panel system will eliminate 5.25 tons of carbon emissions each year, which is the equivalent of planting over 130 trees annually.
How much electricity do ICRTouch now produce?
Currently, at our peak ICRTouch consume 12KW of electricity. So what was installed and how much electricity will it produce?
Pure Green installed 51 x 280W solar panels on the South West side of ICRTouch’s HQ and 3 x inverters.
The array can generate 14.28KW, and we estimate on a sunny day it will be capable of producing nearly 200KWh, covering 100% of ICRTouch’s energy consumption.
How else can you reduce your footprint?
Reducing your footprint often helps businesses streamline their expenses. Below are a few easy ways to reduce your footprint today at no expense.
- Switch off lights and/or equipment when not needed.
- Try not to heat office spaces above 21°C.
- Keep doors and windows closed as much as possible while the air conditioning is on.
- Turn your PC and monitor off overnight.
- Ensure phone chargers, personal printers and laptop docking stations are not left on unnecessarily.
- Set your PC to auto sleep no more than 30 mins from being idle.
