This seems to be happening more and more frequently. There are three common situations that you may be in:

1. You want to bring grid power to a new building or load, such as a new café or EV charger and you have applied to the grid for a quote;
2. You have, or plan to increase the electrical load at your holiday park and have applied to the grid for a supply increase;
3. You have notified the grid that you wish to install renewables at your property and they inform you that upgrade works will be required.

In any of these situations, that upgrade costs can be extortionate. Often, we see quotes that rise to six figures for the network operator to upgrade the local network. Guess who is asked to foot the bill.

Thankfully, Xerogrid is here to help.

We can provide solar for holiday parks that will reduce the demand you place on the grid by configuring the system to ‘peak shave’ and supply power when your demand is highest. You can increase its reliability further by adding a backup generator and charging the batteries from the grid when demand is low, to supplement low renewables generation in the winter.

For larger-scale applications, we can even transfer all your loads to a containerised energy storage system. This manages all your loads, renewables, batteries and backup generator. The grid supplies a trickle charge when required to give you reliable, clean power. For more information on how this works, click here.

With solar costs so low now, the payback time and money saving potential of these systems is very impressive.

The amount you will save depends on various factors, such as your electricity costs, size and position of system, etc.

If you are installing the system to avoid an extortionate grid connection cost, the payback time could even be instant!

Solar panels for holiday parks require little maintenance, other than cleaning to remove dirt and debris that affects their generation.

It’s recommended that the system components and electrical installation undergo an inspection every five years.

Products with moving components, such as a wind turbine or a backup generator, should be services regularly.

Xerogrid offers maintenance and monitoring agreements to give you peace of mind that your system will continue to work at its best.

Usually, you won’t need planning permission to install solar panels for holiday parks.

Solar on a pitched roof, if the panels are at least 20cm from the external edge of the roof and do not go higher than the top of the roof, are covered under permitted development. This rule is in place to prevent dangerous uplift in windy conditions.

If you’re installing solar on a flat roof, it must be at least one metre from any external edge. It also must not protrude higher than one metre from the highest point of the roof.

Ground-mounted arrays (in gardens, etc), can be up to 9m squared under permitted development. This is only around 3 or 4 panels, so you’ll probably need to obtain planning permission for ground-mounts. We offer a planning application service for solar if you want some help.

You can have up to one wind turbine per property under permitted development, but the rules can be challenging to follow. The turbine can be a maximum of 3 metres above the top of the roof (excluding chimneys) or 15 metres high in total, whichever is lower. It also cannot be less than 5 metres from any boundary.

You won’t need to apply when your system will not be able to connect to the grid, even if the rest of the property can. However, if your system can ever connect to the grid, you will need to apply.

For systems with a total possible AC generation of 16 amps per phase or less, you can notify the network operator after the installation has taken place. This is called a G98 notification.

If it will be larger than this, you will need to apply to the network operator prior to install and await their permission. You then need to notify them after the installation. This is called a G99 notification.

Xerogrid Limited offers a grid connection service, which allows you to pass responsibility for the whole process to us.

Renewables do not emit any planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide or methane when they are generating electricity. They also do not pollute the local atmosphere.

Whether you use the grid or a generator, renewables will significantly reduce you and your guests’ contribution to pollution. For context, every unit of electricity from the grid emits an average of 146 grams of carbon dioxide. Whereas, renewables do not emit any. You could reduce your site’s pollution levels by many kilograms per day!

Even batteries alone could increase your generator’s fuel efficiency up to 48% by running at at optimal capacity.