About this group
The Olde House offers self-catering holiday cottages in North Cornwall. Situated on a 550 acre working farm in the village of Chapel Amble.
We provide many facilities including an indoor leisure centre complete with a heated pool, sauna, whirl pool and snooker table. There is also an outdoor tennis court, children’s in door and outdoor adventure play ground, a giant chess set, a pet’s corner and a farm trail.
Here at The Olde House we use approx 250,000 units per year. So in order to produce the equivalent amount of electricity that we use and to reduce our carbon footprint, we have installed 1008 solar panels in one of our fields.
The electricity produced by these solar panels feeds directly into our electric house, which supplies all our cottages, the swimming pool and farm buildings. Any surplus electricity is fed into the national grid.
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We looked at mounting the panels on the roofs of the farm sheds, but decided against this because of the dust and the birds. After long negotiations with Cornwall Council and Aardvark our environmental consultants, a field site for this array was agreed close to the main farm.
The panels are fixed to a framework 800mm above the ground, which allows continuous grazing of the land below.
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Plug into the Sun from Penzance were our main contractors and carried out all of the electrical work along with Molevalley Farmers who provided the solar panels and JPCS who provided the Groundscrew and Krinner frames
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During this project we became members of WREN (Wadebridge Renewable Energy Network) who are a co-operative and whose aims are to establish a low carbon economy within Wadebridge and the surrounding parishes. We are committed to contributing a percentage of our generated income above a set threshold each year to their community fund.
Here is a short video showing the construction of our solar array.
Looking to the future, we are going to provide electric car charge points, for use by our visitors and the general public. We are also researching electric powered vehicles for staff use in and around the farm and the holiday cottage complex.
Everyone is more than welcome to come and see our solar array, so call in anytime for a tour.
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