180 kW Estate-Distributed Install on a Cotswolds Country House Hotel

The hotel

A 60-room independently-owned 4-star country house hotel in Gloucestershire with a 14m pool, full spa, two restaurants, and a 9-hole golf course. Grade II listed Victorian main house, unlisted stable block and Victorian-era outbuildings, walled garden estate grounds. Annual electricity spend £140,000. Owner-operator with strong sustainability commitment driven by wedding-business client demographic.

The brief

Reduce operating cost on the property’s largest line item (electricity), strengthen the venue sustainability narrative for the wedding-business segment, and avoid any installation impact on the Grade II listed main house. The owner had explicitly committed to deploying a lobby live-generation display as part of the venue’s sustainability marketing programme.

What we delivered

Estate-distributed 180 kW array across three locations:

• 110 kW on the unlisted Victorian stable block roof (south-facing pitched roof, ideal orientation)
• 45 kW on the function-suite extension roof (post-1990 unlisted)
• 25 kW ground-mount in a walled-garden corner screened by existing yew hedging

Listed Building Consent secured for the stable block roof installation (the only element requiring consent). Conservation officer pre-application engagement at feasibility stage; formal consent granted in 11 weeks.

Tier-1 Trina 540W panels, SolarEdge optimisers with central inverter sited in the stable block plant room. Monitoring integrated to the hotel’s existing BMS plus a dedicated lobby live-generation display. Grid sync scheduled for a low-occupancy November weekend; total outage 6 hours.

The numbers at year one

• Annual generation: 168,000 kWh (vs PVSyst forecast 162,000 — within 4% positive variance)
• Self-consumption: 91%
• Year-1 saving: £42,000
• Capex: £172,000 gross; AIA tax shield reduced effective net to £129,000
• Effective payback: 3.1 years
• Wedding-business close rate up 14% in the 12 months following lobby display deployment
• Green Tourism Gold certification awarded

What the client said

“Listed Building Consent was a non-trivial concern. They engaged the conservation officer day-one, designed a stable-block install that the planners approved within 10 weeks, and the install went in over a low-occupancy fortnight with zero guest impact. The wedding-business uplift surprised us — we close more wedding bookings now where sustainability is a top-three factor.”