Panels in the channel? Novatech turns roof into solar factory

825-panel installation will pay for itself within 6-7 years, CEO David Furby tells CRN

Novatech has become the latest IT provider to install solar panels at its HQ in an investment CEO David Furby says will pay for itself within six to seven years and bolster its carbon reduction efforts.

The PC builder and public sector supplier has installed 825 solar panels on the roof of its Portsmouth facility as part of wider plans to reduce its carbon footprint.

It hopes to start feeding the electricity generated back into the grid from May.

Panel proponents

Novatech is the latest in a growing line of tech provider opting to use their large roofs to generate solar power.

Computacenter installed 6,300 panels on the roof of its Hatfield HQ in 2019 (see video, bottom), while Furby pointed out that some of his PC builder peers, including Fareham-based Captec and Wakefield-based PC Specialist, have also already made the leap. Westcoast MD Alex Tatham recently revealed that solar panels may form part of the distributor's carbon reduction push, meanwhile.

The commercial solar rooftop market (consisting of projects above 100kW in size) has "finally taken off in the UK", according to the UK Solar Commercial Rooftop Opportunities report. The report covers over 650 rooftop projects, adding up to well over 250MW of installed capacity.

Novatech's 30,000 square foot, south-facing roof and geographic positioning on the south coast made the 400kW installation a "no brainer", Furby said.

" Everybody's got to start thinking about how to become some net zero. And one of the big things is the energy we're using - both gas and electricity - to power our building. We've got a very large roof," he explained.

"We've done other things like reducing energy in the building where we can. And this was the obvious next option. We started looking at it a couple of years ago, but we really thought ‘let's crack on' in July or August last year. We got all our panels in October. But you want to see the payback. I know when we looked at it as a project in October - before electricity prices really started rising - it was about six or seven years."

Grid and determination

There is still plenty to sort out before the implementation goes live, Furby admitted.

"You can't just put 400 kilowatts back into the grid without looking at your internal electrics and everything," he said.

"Bear in mind, our building is 25 years old. We've had to look at the switching and everything else because it was never designed to take 400 kilowatts off the roof. We're having some new panels made up which are allow us to do that. And we're hoping it should go actually live - as in feeding back to the grid - in May.

"We've got a very good connection to the network, so we can feed it back in. Obviously you have to talk to the network and say, ‘I want to put 400 kilowatts into - will you take it please?' And they can sometimes say ‘no'. So you have to get approval from the local electricity company. We operate on the south coast. Our building is south facing. So it all works quite well from an efficiency point of view."

Road to zero

Furby stressed that the roof installation is just part of a wider carbon reduction effort at Novatech, which builds gaming PCs and also supplies IT solutions to public sector and corporates.

"It's part of a journey for us," he explained.

"Once we get this running properly, there are two other things. One is battery storage, which is something we're very interested in. And the next thing is to completely remove the use of gas in the building, which we're hoping will happen in the next 12 to 18 months.

"We're also connecting electric car chargers to the side of the building. They'll be powered off [the roof]. We have a policy whereby if you want a new company car now, it has to an be electric car.

"I think it's absolutely true that sooner or later the government are going to care more about your sustainability than they are about your price. So A, it's the right thing to do, B, I have a good return on my investment and C it's what our customers want - and not just in government: our large corporate customers are also looking at this very closely."

Although Softcat recently set a 2040 ‘net zero supply chain' goal, Furby said Novatech's efforts are currently focused on the emissions it can directly control.

" We are £40m so we're relatively small business. Impacting on our suppliers to get them to be net carbon neutral is quite challenging for someone like us," he said.

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